Beyond Freedom
by CasXxGrippedXxMeXxTight
Summary: Anna and Jack are finally together. But amidst the corruption of London, the scandal of the princess 'past, and the race for the Fountain, can they hold onto what matters most? Will they sail beyond the horizon, love, beyond freedom itself?
1. Chapter 1

** HEY YOU GUUUYYYYYSSSSS! Anyone who can guess what that is from has my complete and undying respect. Anyway, I'm BAAAAACK. Didja miss me? I missed you guys! Well, this is the first chapter of the Fourth and FINAL installment! This is going to be a slightly slower updating sequence, because I have a lot going on with school and everything. Also, I'm really really proud of myself so I'm gonna gloat for a second; I got two silver keys and an honorable mention in Scholastic (like the biggest highschool writers competition there is) and that means I did really really well in regional's. I'm really proud. :3 okay, so please review, and I wanted to give my sincerest thanks to anyone who's reviewed this or any other story recently, you guys just have no idea how much it means. Keep it up?**

** -Han**

Jack Sparrow had never liked London. It was too crowded, covered in dirt, and the people there were too pressed in, packed tight, never allowing themselves freedom. It was like Tortuga without the soul, which was the only reason he cared for the pirate island. But London, London was suffocating. He couldn't bring himself to understand why he'd ever agreed to leaving The Black Pearl behind to come here. His bonny lass was tucked away in an off-shore cave a few islands from Tortuga, guarded by Cotton and his, thankfully, loyal crew. He and Anna had worked their way to England aboard a merchant vessel, both nearly dying from the withdrawal of piracy's poison.

So Jack was in London, without his ship, and with half of the Royal Navy always after him. Did he mention how much he hated London? Whoever had tried to burn it down all those years ago had the right idea. His hand rose, covered in rings and dirt, to scratch his wig. The powdered grey curls clung to the back of his neck, pressing down on his skin until he was uncomfortable, the robes he wore suffocating. Annie was lucky she didn't have to suffer through this. The spectacles on his nose were impairing his quick, sneaky vision, and he knew they muddled the perpetually coy look his black eyes always carried.

Sometimes, Jack thought it would be best if he wasn't such an honorable man, if he wasn't drawn to helping those he considered 'friend' in the past. If he wasn't such a good man, he wouldn't have to subject himself to the unintelligent bigoted people rushing around the streets selling hanging pirate dolls. For the life of him, he couldn't understand _why_ children would want to see anyone hanging by the neck. He knew_ he_ certainly didn't at that age. What was wrong with these people?

Maybe it was something about the city that infected the populace, burrowed into their minds until all they could think of was the tiny little world they were wrapped up in. All that mattered was them, their ambitions, and their city. Didn't they know how much more lay beyond their borders? It was perpetually confusing to the pirate Captain, how someone could stay in one place their entire lives. He could understand Anna's need to be as far away from it as possible, and knew the return to the grey and desolate city was weighing on her far more than it did him. But that didn't mean he didn't hate it with a passion of burning fire inside his chest.

It was too closed in, a labyrinth of rats scurrying over each other in an attempt to get somewhere unimportant and meaningless. Their lives meant nothing in the face of what he did every day, the adventure he face, the horizons he yearned to touch. He was free, they were trapped like carrier pigeons, harboring the ability to fly, but never able to break away. He could do as he liked, move where he wished, he could fly beyond freedom, even, into immortality, into eternity. Jack Sparrow was not held back like the peasants of London.

But he felt like he was, as he walked as calmly as he possibly could down a long, claustrophobic corridor that would lead to the courtroom. He wished he could sway and stumble with his own brand of drunken grace, but he had to wear the act as best he could. He had to hide the suave dark angel of a pirate he knew he was in order to save his friend, his loyal first mate. Though, for the life of him, Jack couldn't understand how Gibbs had managed to land himself in this situation, bound to hang for being Captain Jack Sparrow.

Jack wondered how his first mate managed to get himself in this position, all he and Anna had asked was for him to perform a scouting mission for their next adventure. He was supposed to be gathering information on another way to gain immortality, since the Fountain of Youth fallout. That hadn't been anyone's fault but their own, too honorable to take life from another. Jack would say, if asked, that Anna had talked him out of it, drew him away from eternal life with the gentle touch of a lover. But the truth, he'd lost his lust for it after gaining the knowledge, after understanding what was required. Limitless years meant nothing if it cost another.

No one could know that, just like no one could know that he was a good man at heart, something Anna was helping him believe. He had a reputation to keep up.

He was contradicting that reputation now, as he strode in the impossibly loud courtroom, so alive with the promise of a hanging. For all the bad press pirates got, Jack had yet to meet one so enraptured with the possibility of death. That was reserved for the common folk, apparently, those tied down to their lives by jobs, families, the pressure of royalty and law. They knew nothing of his life, yet they judged it with the force of iron and the strength of a hangman's noose.

His cunning gaze traveled the confined room, landing quickly on Gibbs, who's hands were bound in iron chains. Jack's wrists itched in sympathy, and he remembered all the times it had been him on the other end, trying to talk his way out of his own death. How many times had he escaped? He wondered when his luck would run out. What then?

Anna would be left alone on the rolling waves, a sea she would want to succumb to. He'd made her promise, on the deck of the Pearl, that she would not try to save him. He'd made her promise to call for her brother, to join him on the Dutchman, rather than join him in the crushing oblivion of death. Her arms had wrapped around his neck, body pressed against his in a way that assured him of her existence, in a way that proved she wasn't just a shadow, a ghost, and whispered that she would. Her voice had been low, as if she didn't trust it, when her eyes met his they were tinged with worry, regret, grief.

Jack didn't want to leave her, never did, she was his best friend, but he had to be sure. He had to be sure that no matter what befell him on the rolling seas, the chaotic waves of ever-changing tides that she would live on.

To the outside world, nothing had changed. Jack Sparrow was still the charming, suave pirate he'd always been, gold teeth glinting in the fading sunlight as he downed mug after mug of amber rum, letting himself be taken away among its frothy waves of ambivalence. But he always found his way home, back to his ship without a lass on his arm, he was always faithful. Sometimes, he wondered how he managed it. How he managed to shift his ways into something solid, into something he could climb in bed with day after day and never throw out. Maybe it was because he'd seen her at her best, her worst, her adventurous. Maybe he saw something of himself in her, and he always had admired himself. Maybe it just wasn't as hard as everyone made it out to be, caring, that was.

He found that his tether to her did not tie them down, only kept them connected as they sailed, flew, explored. Nothing changed about him, he pilfered, pillaged, held men and women at gunpoint with a cunning smile, and she was always next to him sword drawn as sharp as her wit. She managed to keep up easily, matching his moves and mannerisms with her own and brining him to earth and the sun at once.

He couldn't for the life of him, remember why he'd been adverse to the idea. So he told himself he never was. That way he'd always been right.

His steps caused the room to quiet, a hush falling over the commoners crammed into the box seats, staring down at him like he was God, or King, or both. At least this side trip had its bonus's, he thought wryly, as he took his preferred seat and adjusted his spectacles. He wondered if the judge ever cleaned them, as he squinted to make out the mutton-chopped ally he'd known for more years than he favored to count.

"Well, what do we have here?" he asked, a flash of gold teeth only Gibbs could see. Jack smiled, a twitch of his lips at the corners, and it felt heavy under the white powder he'd applied to his beard. He felt older. He didn't like it.

"_Jack?" _Gibbs breathed, shock swimming in his eyes as he leaned forward. The Bailiff reacted, smashing down on his head with a sharp blow that almost made Jack cringe. So much for a fair system.

"Not necessary!" Jack shouted over the answering roar of the crowd, approval for the belligerent act coursing through their veins and he was against the mob. The claustrophobic pack of people intent on their idea of justice. Jack heard once that the intelligence of a mob could be defined by its least intelligent member. He heard the shouts of '_string 'im up!' _and knew it would be a long day. "You were saying?" he asked, attempting to hint at Gibbs as subtly as possible.

"…Jack Sparrow is not my name!" Gibbs picked up, as if he'd never stopped speaking, annoyance and mistrust mingling in his eyes. This was the second time Jack had impersonated a judge, and the first had not ended well. "My name is Gibbs, Joshamee Gibbs!"

"Is that so?" Jack asked, thoughtfully gazing at the man below him, a ringed hand rising to finger his moustache. "It says _Jack Sparrow _here," he said, indicating a piece of parchment he'd only distractingly noticed before.

"I told 'em! I'm not Jack Sparrow, who I would be happy to identify to the court, _if it would help my case_," Gibbs trailed off in a snarl, eyeing the pirate Captain before him haughtily. Jack wondered when his first mate had grown so comfortable in his presence. It seemed difficult to find proper help these days.

"I think that would be a poor defense unless you want to be bludgeoned again like a harp seal," Jack said quickly, something like a challenge in his eyes as he met Gibbs'. At this point, Jack would have killed for an adventure, a chase, a near-death experience, _anything _to make London more interesting.

His statement caused a rousing of the crowd, people bent in half over the railing in order to scream their approval, a few in the back corner attempting to start up a chant of _Hang Him, Hang Him. _And people wondered why pirates were so ruthless. It seemed to him that law abiding people were far more brutal.

Jack banged half-heartedly with his gavel, wondering why it was necessary to equip a judge with a small wooden hammer anyway; it would do virtually no damage should his life fall into danger. It seemed more ornamental than anything.

"The prisoner claims to be innocent of being Jack Sparrow. How do you find?" Jack asked, a grin threatening to break from his lips and incriminate himself. Sometimes, most times, Jack couldn't help but marvel at his own genius, his own ability to twist logic until it suited him. He knew Anna found it fascinating too, only furthering his own happiness with his ability. Others were strong, he was _smart. _

"No trial? But aren't we here to examine the evidence?" the Foreman asked, as if he was actually concerned with the evidence. He knew as well as Jack did that the conviction rate for pirates was above a hundred.

"Foreman," Jack called, almost in warning, as if to draw this man back into the mob, back into the rolling mass of bigotry and lies. "Your finding. Guilty?" he asked excitedly, like he wanted guilty, like he wanted his first mate with a noose around his neck, rope digging into his flesh until the face turned purple, eyes blown wide and mouth slack.

"Guilty verdict means he'll hang," the man said in that same, unwilling voice, but Jack could see a glint in his eyes, could see the excitement, the energy. The crowd around them erupted, shouts of approval ringing out among them until it hurt his head, reminding him of his first hangover when the sunlight burned his eyes and the voices were deafening shrieks.

"_String him up!" _another woman shouted, broken teeth and dirt smudges advertised so blatantly as she screamed. Say what you will about Tortuga women, but at least they hid their faults. He wondered if Anna had any at all. He liked to insist that he knew every inch of her body like it was his own, like her skin was the map on his desk, so carefully traced out in the half-glow of moonlight and stuttering candles.

Jack brought himself back to the present, shifting his eyes across the court room until the pantheon of noise quieted, a hush falling over the people as they leaned in, expressions rapt as they waited.

"Guilty?" The Forman made it sound like a question, like he wasn't sure of what was happening around him. That made him perfect for Jack.

"_That's not fair!" _Gibbs screamed, emptying his lungs into the once again alive crowd, bursting at the seams with noise, approval, shouts that could only communicate the raw, animalistic instinct to do harm unto another being. It wasn't humanities most attractive trait.

"Shut it!" Jack shouted, banging with his useless hammer again until the room hushed, awaiting the words that would make their afternoons interesting. The words that would command people to flood into the streets to watch a man go lifeless. "Joshamee Gibbs! The crime which you've been found guilty of is being innocent of being Jack Sparrow," he listed with the same conspiring grin he wore when he knew he'd cornered another pirate in a battle. Gibbs' bewildered eyes made the pirate Captain want to chuckle lowly, and the sound would vibrate out until it was a drunken laugh. And he was back in Tortuga, a pirate woman by his side, cheating at cards for him, her blue eyes tinged with alcohol and something else, something harder to define. "I hereby commute your sentence and order that you be imprisoned for the remainder of your miserable, moribund, mutton-chopped life," he said with as much contempt as he could muster, grin so pronounced he was sure he was arousing suspicion.

Maybe then he would get the chase he so lusted for.

A cacophony of sound rose up to greet him, furious shouts of the mob burrowing into his head until they were rooted there, _HangHimHangHimHangHim. _He was taken back to that day, the end of his first adventure with Anna, the gallows swallowing his view and he had been so sure he was going to die, was going to meet his end as a spectacle for the crowd, while a princess was powerless and forced to watch. The moments leading up to the noose around his neck were distant, a rising panic taking hold in his chest he wouldn't feel again until his number ran up a year later. When death would greet him and refuse to leave without him. He could remember hearing Anna's screams, drifting to him on a subtle wind as he tore his wrist from the chain and waited for the beast to meet him.

He never mentioned it, never spoke of the raw, agonized voice that had met his mind when he was swallowed, the tortured soul that made him cringe. He didn't deserve that kind of care, that kind of devotion. He wasn't much of a friend.

He would be lying if he said he didn't still feel like that, like he was too damaged to lay beside her and not make her cry, like he was too broken not to break her, like his touch was too rough not to cause her pain. But she never once complained, never once asked him to stop being anything he was, only made him fly higher, until he wasn't chasing freedom anymore, he was beyond it.

"There!" he said as brightly as he could, banging his gavel once and standing with heavy shoulders, eyes on the ground in a moment of collective insanity, outside and inside. He forced himself to quiet the storm inside his body and walked out as the Bailiff spoke about moving Gibbs to the Tower of London. He could hear the outraged cries of the public, the smack of food as it was thrown into the court. A waste of their pension.

As he walked, he eradicated the stiff backed walk and settled back into the drunken swagger he knew, systematically removing the spectacles, wig, and robes. He tossed all but the last to the side and opened a broom cupboard, glancing in at the judge he'd tied to a chair, his frantic eyes on Jack like his life was passing before his eyes. The pirate laid the robes on his like a blanket, a cheery smile on his lips as he nodded his head.

"Thanks much," he said, the quick smirk reappearing with the grace of a fallen angel spreading black wings to take flight. He took off the scarf and tossed it to the side, walking out a back door with drunken purpose, snatching his hat from a horse and stuffing back on his head like it was the hat's fault it had been so far away from him. "Ta," he said to no one in particular, maybe to the horse, as he jumped in a line of condemned pirates. A guard ushered him on, into a barred carriage as Jack winked at the driver, catching a glimpse of the skull and crossbones inked into his skin.

He was pushed into the carriage alongside Gibbs and a shadowed figure in the corner, resting with his knees pulled up to his chest. The man's wrists were covered in trinkets, charms and silver littering the short expanse of skin between hand and shirt sleeve. Shadow covered his face, but Jack could see the feminine tilt of her neck, slim fingers tapping a mindless beat on her thigh. He grinned, a cat like expression dawning on his features as he wondered who she had to swindle to end up back here, dressed like she always was with all her spoils clearly in view.

"Love?" he asked, just to be sure, watching with trepidation as she leaned forward, shadows melting from her skin like she was emerging from fog and mystery and myth.

"Ello, Birdie," Anna greeted with a wide conspiring grin. Blue eyes glinted mischievously in the low light as Jack and Gibbs took stalk of her. Her limbs looked wiry, sinewy, lean, tan skin containing the elegantly sculpted muscles of a sailor and fighter. Her hair was swept back in a sloppy wrap, tendrils falling into her heart-shaped face. The excitement never died in her eyes, through the months they had been sailing on their own, always alive with a fire Jack could understand. She leaned forward further, tantalizing body shifting like water to bring her face closer to Jack's. "Or should I say, 'The Honorable Justice Smith?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey Guys! Thank you so much to all people that reviewed, it means an awful lot. So, this is the second chapter, and the third should be out pretty soon, with more insight to Anna's thoughts, I promise. I hope this turned out alright, please tell me what you think. Love you!**

** -Han**

Anna leaned forward, a half-empty silver flask clutched between ringed fingers like a life line, that coy smile on her lips digging into Jack's chest, worming it's a way into his veins and setting fire to his blood. She passed it to him without him asking, fingers brushing his in a soft, assuring way, as if to be sure he was there. He swallowed the rum down, the warmth in his chest doubling, fire racing through his body.

"Now the lot of us are headed for prison!" Gibbs muttered, curses slipping under his breath, but Anna could hear him.

"Not to worry, we've paid off the driver," she answered with the same coy look. Gibbs couldn't tell if she'd adopted it from Jack, or if it was of her own brand and making, her own way of looking pretentious to nearly a fault. But if they were arrogant, he was stupid, and he didn't think that.

"Ten minutes, we'll be outside Londontown, horses waiting. Tonight we'll make the coast. Then it's just a matter of finding a ship," Jack took up for her, the conversation flowing so easily between them, Gibbs wondered, as he often did, if they operated on the same wavelength, if they could read the thoughts passing through each other's minds.

"All part of the plan, yes?" Gibbs asked, almost unwillingly sarcastic, but had to be sure nothing would go wrong. In the five months after the pirate war, they had been almost reckless, intent to reach every horizon with a dauntingly familiar smile and a bottle of rum and a poorly thought-out plan. Because they could afford imperfection with a loyal crew, and no terrible force chasing after them. He couldn't count the number of near-death experiences he'd had since the Pearl had left Tortuga with Barbossa shrinking behind them.

"Exactly. We arrived in Londontown just this morning to rescue one Joshamee Gibbs from one appointment with the gallows," Jack said with an almost demeaning look, as if questioning his validity as a pirate, to be caught on a stealth mission.

"Seeing as how you're still alive, I'd say it's all been very successful thus far," Anna added, leaning back against the carriage with a flippant look of pride. They knew what they were doing, even when they didn't, and it was something Gibbs could rely on.

"What happened to you, Gibbs? I'd thought you were otherwise engaged?" Jack asked, real concern drifting into his dark eyes for a moment, before being pushed down again by the brightness of piracy and freedom.

"Aye, an' information's not so hard to come by," Gibbs muttered. "One's only got to be careful who's spillin'."

"Swindle the wrong man for the word, eh?" Anna asked, twisting one of her rings absently. Gibbs nodded sullenly, remembering the exact moment the nobleman had caught him in the act, the moment his bribe fell through. "Did you at least learn anything?"

"Aye, word on the docks is that the little pirate princess of London arrived naught but twenty four years ago by way of merchant ship, carried by a woman with haunted eyes and a sword on her belt. All men knew her to be pirate, but no one spoke of it. She was accompanied by one Captain Wesson," Gibbs relayed with a nearly delighted smile.

"The one the Pearl dispatched on the crossing from England?" Jack asked with a side-long glance, pride mixing in his eyes. He knew she had pirate blood, it had been obvious to him from the moment he saw her on the docks at Port Royal.

"Aye," she whispered, a soft look in her eyes and she tried to wrap her mind around the words. Her mother was a pirate that alone was enough to cause elation to course through her body. She hadn't been built for the life of London, she was born to be what she was.

"Name wasn't willing on the tongue of the man I was speakin' to, but they think she was Captain by the tilt of her chin," Gibbs added, leaning forward to gauge her reaction as he spoke. She nodded almost absently.

"Yes, Calypso did hint at that before we released her," she said thoughtfully, casting her mind back to the quickly whispered words that set her mind aflame with the possibility of a family, of a mother she'd never known.

"But what of the Pearl, Jack? I've had my ear to the ground for any whispering's of the Black Pearl. Nobody's seen where she might next make port - then, I hear a rumor. Jack Sparrow was in London, with a ship, and looking for a crew!" Gibbs explained, eyes shifting between the two.

"Am not!" Jack shouted indignantly, reminding Anna of a small child.

"We left the Pearl in Cotton's hands far enough from Tortuga to ensure its safety. We couldn't risk bringing it this close to the crown," Anna explained, rolling her eyes at the resentful look on Jack's face. She knew he hated when people pretended to be him, it took away his air of mystery, demoted his self-proclaimed stature as the best pirate anyone's ever seen.

"But that's what I heard. Fact is, you're signing up men tonight, pub called Captain's Daughter," Gibbs said as he took the flask from Jack and swallowed, allowing amber liquid to slide easily down his throat.

"Am. Not!" Jack repeated, stealing the flask back and taking another swig. Anna smiled at him, a warm flash of something deeper than friendship that Gibbs didn't miss. He'd started a count of how often they showed affection. In the five months since they'd been spotted at the helm wrapped around each other like they would drown without the other, he'd counted ten. Total. It was a game amongst the crew; try to catch them staring soulfully into each other's eyes or whispering lowly things that made blushes rise on their cheeks. Gibbs quickly accepted that they were unlike Will and Elizabeth, unlike any couple he'd ever seen.

Most didn't believe they were even together, doubted they cared for one another on a level pirates rarely did. They were pirates first, a team second, and a couple third.

"Well, I thought it a bit odd. Then, you've never been the most predictable of sorts," Gibbs said in something close to contempt. Jack wondered when he'd gotten so lax on his crew.

"Tell me something. There is another Jack Sparrow out there sullying my good name?" Jack asked, not bother to acknowledge Anna's smile. They'd long ago accepted their relationship as different. Affection was shown in the cover of nightfall, watching the stars overhead like they were a tapestry of ancient history they could decipher. Smiles were shared as they opened their eyes to the waking world, bodies bathed in sunlight and sheets that smelled of rum and the sea and, now, of Anna.

"An imposter," Gibbs said with a nod, eyes flicking between the two of them as Anna nodded.

"But an imposter with a ship," she reflected, rubbing a hand over her face in thought. she shifted, scuffing her boots on the floor as she reached across Jack for the flask, draining the last of it with a swig that went straight to her mind and made it fuzzy on the edges. Comfortable warmth filled her body as a substitute for Jack's body against hers, constant heat she could nuzzle against in the cold. But she couldn't do that here.

"And in need of a crew," Gibbs added, staring forlornly at the empty flask. "But what of you, Jack? Last I heard you an' Annie were hell bent on the Fountain!"

"Circumstances arose, and forced a compelling insight regarding discretion and the valor," Jack said with a blank look, remembering their adventure through the jungles of the southern amazon to locate a witch doctor, the clear instructions of the fountain he gave them, the immediate disgust he tasted on his tongue in response.

"Meaning you gave up?" Gibbs guessed.

"No! We're still bent on immortality, hellishly so, but the Fountain is not the way," Anna said plainly, eyes flicking to Jack as if in confirmation.

"Though we may find it anyway," Jack said suddenly, a thought he'd been ruminating on for less than a week.

"That's the Jack I know!" Gibbs proclaimed, ignoring the slightly abashed look that flitted over Anna's eyes.

"I'll not have it said that there was a point on the map Captain Jack Sparrow never found," he vowed, serious face broken as the carriage lurched to a stop. "Oh, short trip," he said with a delighted look in his eyes.

Anna swallowed, a sudden feeling of foreboding washing over her. She knew London, knew the distance between one place and another better than she knew her own body. They weren't at the drop off point. On instinct, she reached for her pistol, cocking it with decisive movements as Jack opened the carriage and stepped out. Her heart sped up, images of the Tower of London spinning behind her eyes and the way regimented soldiers had corralled pirates into the prison during the raid, the same one that had shown her the depth of her father's hatred, the one that had bonded her with piracy forever. She often wondered what became of the pirate boy, the one she'd pulled away from soldiers and her father, innocent eyes burdened with fear and panic he shouldn't be feeling.

Dirty blonde hair slathered to his skull, unwashed and stained by the sea and the mud of the London streets. His eyes were his defining factor, she remembered, such raw virtue crumbling beneath the pressures of the world around him, an undefinable blue-green, an aqua light she hoped would be relit. She remembered pushing him into a church, begging for him to claim sanctuary, and breathing easier when he finally did.

She snapped out of it, forcing her body into the present as the door opened completely and she swallowed roughly. A regiment of soldiers surrounded them, muskets pointed threateningly at them, death swimming in their eyes like an invitation. But she knew Death on a first name basis, knew the gripping caress of it against your skin like a lover, she knew the splash of white water it left behind as it sucked a man under. They didn't scare her. Not anymore.

"All part of the plan, eh?" Gibbs asked sarcastically, eyes locked on Jack as he gauged his chances of survival. Finding himself with slim to none, as an officer tossed the driver a jingling bag, Jack turned assuredly to get back into the carriage.

The butt of a rifle rained down on the back of Jack's head like the hand of a god, sending him limp and barely standing to face Gibbs and Annie. He managed a subtle nod at Anna just behind the older man, and returned his eyes to his first mate.

"No," he managed weakly, before succumbing to the darkness around him, allowing himself to be taken under by the rolling waves of unconsciousness and the sea of blackness he knew so well. Gibbs managed to catch him, glaring bitingly at anyone who attempted to touch the Captain. He half turned to look at Anna, surprised to find her eyes blank, devoid of thought or pain or worry, a mask of blue he hadn't seen in a while.

She moved subtly, pressing herself close enough to him to slip the rolled charts into the inside of his vest. "Study it, learn every possible route," she whispered fervently, her voice barely audible above a subtle wind. "Then destroy it and come find us."

Gibbs nodded stoically, watching her eyes flit between the oncoming guards and Jack's unconscious body for only an instant, long enough to prove that she cared. The softness that crept into her gaze was something rare among the many oceans pirates sailed on, but Gibbs had a feeling that in the cover of darkness, it swept over her features often. She met his gaze again, and his look was almost fatherly, a soft thing as he gave her the only blessing he could muster.

"Gods speed." 


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey darlings! I'm so sorry this is late, but it's longer to make up for it! Please review, and I'm sorry. I won't keep you waiting so long next time. Promise!**

**-Han**

Anna would say she could walk on her own, but as they dragged her through the estate doors, she doubted it. Her knees felt unstable, weak, and her spine seemed to want to hunch itself, protect her from the rest of the world. Two guards held her by her arms, dragging her unceremoniously down the halls, leaving dark smudges of her boots against the marble. Her hands shook, but she didn't show it, eyes facing the ground like she could read the patterns in the beige tile.

She tried to convince herself she wasn't scared. She tried to fool herself into believing she was strong, that her back was straight and her dignity impenetrable. But she was falling, sinking into memories better left forgotten and she could remember her goodbyes at Port Royal, once her father found her, once he'd sent for her. And she kissed freedom goodbye like Jack had kissed her on the battlements, only the touch wasn't lingering, and it was slipping through her fingers far too fast and suddenly she was in London, and London was her prison. Bars of crowded streets suffocating her lust for open air and rolling seas, she was empty on the inside, her fire had died.

Blankness was settling into her mind, over taking any form of thought as she tried to quell the frightened child in her chest, clawing at her heart to find sanctuary. Jack had finally woken, and was watching the world around him with sad, desolate eyes as they dragged the pair down the halls. Anna could feel the comfort of pirate being torn off of her, leaving vicious claw marks on a wounded princess.

A set of doors opened to usher them inside and she felt her heart in her throat, fear gripping her like it could manipulate her movements and she was shaking. Something Jack had never seen and she didn't want to show it now. Her hands fisted as they shoved her into an ornate chair, their fingers bruising as they manacled her, irons fastening in a way silk scarves had in her past. When her father wanted perfect posture and her spine wouldn't comply. Her chin tilted in defiance as they walked out, a mask she could rely on falling into place. The doors closed and silence enveloped them.

Her eyes flicked to every corner, familiarity like a taste on her tongue, and she was tracing escape routes like she knew Jack was. He hadn't said anything yet, intent on a cream pastry on the table in front of them. Food was piled high on an ornate table, a large throne behind it, a gold chandelier hanging from the ceiling like a pendulum. She was sure Jack hadn't eaten in days, much like her. Suddenly, hunger over took her distress, a pressing force she knew so well and they'd been so far undercover they couldn't afford to stop for food.

As one they forced their chairs forward, dragging them across marble flooring in a harsh grating sound that filled their ears and threatened to shatter their minds. Anna glanced at Jack, friendly competition for the pastry rising in her eyes as she tried to drown out her misery. A coy smile rose to his feature and he strained to push his chair forward. She smirked, pushing herself another few inches, their arms stretching out as one to take their prize.

A creak from the hidden door to the right of them had them pausing violently, eyes blown wide as their minds spun to find explanation. Without thought, Jack kicked the bottom of the table, watching the pastry rolled from its plate with almost tantalizing slowness, flaky crust making Anna wet her lips. It plummeted towards the floor, and she reacted, kicking it up on reflex and watching it be impaled on a spire of the chandelier above them.

The doors opened and both pirates crossed their legs, as if nothing had happened. Anna forced her body to relax muscle by muscle, refusing to show weakness or fear. She allowed a casual smirk to rise to her features as the group of well dressed men entered, soldiers holding muskets high to protect their king.

King George the First walked sluggishly through the door, his own weight impairing any sense of grace as he tottered towards them and sat himself with a creak of his throne. If it was possible, he'd gotten bigger since she'd last saw him, white powder caked into deep lines on his face and the perpetually pinched look he wore, like he'd smelled something bad. Anna wanted to laugh, relief rolling off of her shoulders because at least it wasn't her father.

Only her grandfather.

She sent an almost reassuring glance to Jack, switching the roles as she felt herself sinking back into piracy and freedom and fearless drive. This man couldn't hurt her, not like her father could. Jack nodded subtly, a gleam in his eyes that spoke of pride. He hadn't said anything to her, knowing she could drag herself from the dark inside her own chest better than he ever could. There were some things she understood in a way Jack could never quiet accomplish. It was a foreign wall inside her body that he knew she could handle.

She was strong enough not to need his hand, and that meant more than any kind word he could have given her.

"You _are _Jack Sparrow?" the Carteret asked, a diplomat with his nose stuck permanently in the air. He gazed down at Jack in contempt, but it wasn't him who answered.

"_Captain_," Anna corrected with a patronizing smile. "I expect someone as obsessed with titles as you to remember that."

"Petulant child, you've no right," he hissed, a slip in his position, anger in his eyes. The king waved him off lazily, his eyes rapt on the brown eyed pirate.

"I have heard of you. And you know who I am," he said with a sloppy smirk, a croaking laugh wheezing from his throat. He was pointedly ignoring her, but it might have only been because he wanted something from Jack.

"Face is familiar; have I threatened you before?" he asked, reminding Anna of that first day in Port Royal, when he danced Death with her brother and she'd had to hit him with a bottle. A ghost of a smile rose to her lips at the thought, her chest still hollow from the loss of Will. She missed him more than she could ever communicate to Jack.

"You are in the presence of George Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, Arch treasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Great Britain and Ireland ...and of you," the Carteret spouted off with rehearsed familiarity. Anna rolled her eyes and tried to cross her arms over her chest, finding the movement restricted by the manacles.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Jack responded quickly.

"And does it for your _friend_," the king asked, a contempt in the word like it was a condemnation. Anna tilted her head to the side, and squinted as if trying to decipher the many layers of age and fat and age and nodded slowly.

"One can only hope familial resemblance does not carry two generations," she said finally, a defiant smirk on her lips and she was sure the king had never seen her wear it before. "Maybe I look like my mother."

"_Annabelle?" _he stuttered, flabbergasted. She grinned, unable to restrain herself from this game of cat and mouse. Jack was glancing at her with a kind of pride she could feel reflected in her own heart. "I was told you'd been killed."

"Heavens no," she said with a smile. "I have simply elected to rid myself of the pressures and obligations of a crown I neither want nor need, in order to live a life I can be proud of."

Silence met her statement as the king attempted to make sense of her words, his lips moving soundlessly as he worked out her statement. "Piracy," he spat finally, a glare reaching his eyes.

"But what need of piracy do _you _have, may I ask?" Jack pushed in, hoping to forestall any rash action on the part of the king. The lasting they wanted was for him to call for the prince, to call for George the Second.

"I am informed that you have come to London to procure a crew for your ship," George said finally, shifting his beady eyes from Anna's.

"I am Jack Sparrow. But I am not here to procure a crew," Jack grunted, rolling his eyes and pulling on his manacles indignantly. Ann copied him, testing her movement within her bonds as she shifted.

"That…is…someone else," she took up for him, muttering over the sound of ringing iron and prayed Jack knew what he was doing. She didn't think she could handle a failure here, anywhere but here. Failure meant her father would know, and he would undoubtedly find her. That was a panic she couldn't mask, couldn't tuck away into a corner and forget about. This was a fast-rising, quick fire that would race through her body like it needed to find the center of things. In her heart it would fester, fear, panic, thundering in her chest until she was scrambling for protection. She couldn't afford that now, had to play the game the way Jack needed her to.

"Ah. Someone _else_ named Jack Sparrow," the king said with a sneer, shifting his attention to the Carteret and Pelham. "You brought me the wrong wastrel. Find the proper one, and dispose of this imposter!"

"Hang on!" Anna shouted indignantly, as if offended. "I shall have you know that he is the one and _only _Captain Jack Sparrow, and he _clearly _is in London," she said slowly, as if he was stupid. Jack rattled his chains more, looking down at his dirt-caked hands as if concentrating, his brow furrowed and his wrists aching.

"To procure a crew?"

"What?" Jack asked, both pirates rattling their chains more and watching with barely hidden glee as the king flinched in response. This was working better than he expected, all he needed was to get George to say the right words and they would be free.

"To undertake a voyage to the Fountain-" he cut himself off, his head pounding with the reverberating sounds of manacles ringing across the ornate dining room, bouncing off the delicate china and the spires of the chandeliers. It was a noise the old king preferred never to hear, choosing to occupy himself with the lighter subjects of ruling, while his son carried on _those _affairs. But to George the First, the sound of ringing iron made his head hurt. "Can someone please remove these infernal chains?" he shouted, unable to retain a sense of decorum when the noise was marring his ear drums.

Both pirates sighed with relief, motions syncopated with practice, and they were good at this, and both of them knew it. Guards came behind them, fingers rough on their skin, and Anna didn't see the warning glance Jack gave to them when they touched her wrists too roughly.

"We know you're in possession of a map," the Pelham said snidely, cold eyes flicking between both pirates as they rubbed their wrists softly. Anna looked away from them, her eyes o the window to her right, the heavy ornate curtains. Her fingers massaged her right wrist and she wished Jack could do it for her, his rough fingers pressing into the vulnerable skin of her inner wrist. But pirates didn't show affection.

"So confiscate the map, and to the gallows with him!" the Carteret shouted, nearly stamping his foot in resentment. Anna wondered if all men in politics had the emotional span of a teaspoon, too quick to bubble over and they would do something rash.

"Have you a map?" George asked tiredly, a hand over his eyes like he was shielding himself from the stupidity around him. Jack stood up, eyeing the table of food in front of him with an animalistic lust. He hadn't eaten in at least three days. The ship they'd bartered their way onto hadn't had enough provisions for two extra hands, and Anna refused to steal from those who helped them. And now there was opportunity, he was only waiting for the right moment to seize it.

He glanced back at Anna as the king's words reached his mind. She was leaning back in her chair like it was her own thrown, arms casually laid out and a leg slung over the left arm almost provocatively. He swallowed. She nodded, tipping her head towards his vest and he could read her eyes so well. She'd given the map to Gibbs, like they'd talked about, and ordered him to destroy it. He wondered why he doubted her.

"No," he said brightly to the king, a grin on his lips as he moved forward, staring admiringly at the plethora of sustenance in front of him. If he could just have one bite, maybe he could think straight about the situation they were in. Maybe he could focus on the subtle hints Anna was giving him, the small twitches she was adopting.

But his hunger was getting in the way of his understanding. Because she was _scared_, something he hadn't seen since Will was dying, since her younger brother lay broken in her and Elizabeth's arms. She was trying to hide it, burying it under her own hunger, her mask of piracy and freedom, but he could see through her.

He always could, even when she didn't want him to. Even when she lay next to him in his cabin, her eyes on the ceiling tracing patterns in the woodwork, and he knew she was trying to be nonchalant. But he knew what she was thinking, always seemed to, and he reached across the distance and slung an arm across her body and pulled her against him, like he could protect her. She'd tried to smile, the edges of her lips quivering, as he pressed a kiss to her temple and whispered that Will wouldn't want her to be so sad. She'd sighed and asked him how he always managed to know. He'd grinned, refusing to answer, and traced his fingers across her arm in the moonlight.

But not now. Now he hadn't eaten for days and he his mind was split down the middle trying to quell the gnawing hunger clawing at his body and trying to think his way out. Everything was pulling at his body and at the center was Annie, willing to stand by him, ready for the ends of the earth and the possibility of seeing her own Hell incarnate. Her father. Sometimes he wondered how she was able to do it. How she could sacrifice so much to stand there, back straight with that dazzling smile that reminded him of the sun on the water, eyes like the sea after a storm, voice like the call of the ocean, body unique to her and _she _was his North Star, his way home.

Sometimes he forgot that, but never for long. Because when he needed her, she was there. Faithfully.

"Where is it?" the Carteret asked, pulling him back to the present and reminding him of the task at hand: eating and not dying. In that order.

Jack flicked his gaze to Anna as she toyed with a bracelet around her wrist, watching the way it caught the light and trying to keep her breathing even and relaxed. He knew she was worrying about her father, something Jack could never quiet comprehend. It was a walled piece of her heart he'd never been allowed inside of. And when she tensed at the sight of silk scarves and corsets, he didn't question her. He didn't push her.

"Truth?" Jack asked, as if they would want anything less. "I lost it…quiet recently in fact," he said brightly, sure Gibbs would be studying at that moment.

"I have a report. The Spanish have located the Fountain of Youth," George muttered as Jack stepped forward, no longer having any regard for the people around him as he prepared to dip his finger into a particularly delicious cream tart. He wasn't really listening to the king, but distantly confirmed what he'd already thought; this was about the Fountain. It didn't seem to matter that he and Anna had lost their lust for it, and had promised themselves to never go after it. They hadn't even had to verbalize that, they simply knew. "I will not-" he banged his fist on the table, rattling everything on it and causing Jack to draw back instinctively. "Have some _melancholy_-" another bang on the table as Jack drew back again. "Spanish monarch," George shouted louder, his voice booming off the walls as he slammed his fist into the table again, and Jack couldn't stop the pout that fell to his face as he drew back again. "A _Catholic!" _he added with another bang on the table. "_Gain-Eternal-Life!"_ he boomed, accentuating each word with a violent bang on the table.

_Finally_, Dear lord, _finally_, Jack tipped his finger into the cream and stole the cherry, popping it into his mouth with something close to animalistic glee. He heard the rough and tumbled chuckle of Anna behind him and grinned to himself, loving the way her laugh sounded so free, throaty like she'd been screaming too long over the wind at the crew.

"You do know the way to the Fountain?" the Pelham asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Course we do!" Jack answered, sure to include Annie with a grin over his shoulder. She smirked, opening her arms in a welcoming gesture.

"Look at us," she finished for him, indicating their relaxed posture and youthful faces. She was good at playing people, Jack realized, something like pride in his eyes. He'd taught her, raised the pirate inside her chest from a dusty corner and brought it to the surface. He knew he had. "Would you expect anything less than perfect navigational skills?" she questioned, coy smile on her lips like she as waiting for the bait to take.

"You could guide an expedition?" the Carteret asked, finally looking at Anna, as if she hadn't been worth his attention before. She nodded to Jack, as if indicating it was his turn to speak.

"With your permission, your heinie, you will be providing, then, a ship?" Jack asked, while positioning a chair to his liking, casting a glance at Anna as he did so. She stood as he spoke, catching on quickly as she moved lethargically to stand beside him. She fiddled with a handkerchief, throwing it behind her as if she was bored.

"And a crew?" Anna finished, her head tilting in question. The Carteret glared at her but managed to eradicate it in an instant, his face clearing and a petulant smile rising to his powdered lips.

"And…a captain," he said with a flourish of his arm as the doors opened again, a wig wearing man entering the room on a stiff peg leg, his gait thundering and slow, but somehow, not ungraceful. Jack bent his body in half behind Anna, unwilling to see the man behind the wig and trying to make Anna smile all in one action. He could feel her tense shoulders, her unwillingness to believe that any of the other men accompanying the stranger could be the man she feared most, the dark enigma, the force of evil that was the Prince of England.

The mystery man bowed lowly, his movements stiff and almost unwilling, as if his spine did not want to comply with the demands of society. Anna knew the feeling. When his head rose her heart stopped, seizing in her chest and suddenly she wondered if this was where the road ended, if this was where freedom lead her. If this was where the lust for the horizon led to, if this is what was beyond the veil of freedom.

Barbossa lifted his powder-caked face, the bleached color falling into the crevices into her face like it was trying to break them apart and split his soul open to be shown to the bureaucrats and the king. His eyes looked empty to Anna, like the life had been sucked out of them the minute he'd handed over his soul to the chains of occupation. When he spoke, his voice was restrained, like he'd been practicing his propriety. Unlike the pirate he used to be, unlike the free man he used to embody.

"Afternoon, sire." 


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey, I was a little bit disappointed by the lack of response last chapter, but the reviews I did get were so honestly amazing that I can't stay mad. Those who did review, your comments mean everything to me and I cannot thank you enough for the amazing things you've said. Okay, so can I get maybe…. reviews? not many. and I won't withhold so long this time. And in case anyone wonders, what Jack recites is Shakespeare's 57****th**** Sonnet. Thank you again!**

**-Han**

Jack gave his former first mate, former enemy, former comrade, and again, enemy a stern glance, as if he was disappointed. And he was. He wondered if the powder-caked man before him could sink lower, he wondered if his soul had died. Jack could never understand those who gave up the thrill of piracy, it was like changing the tides with a twitch of a finger. It was unimaginable. But here was Hector Barbossa, shifting the seas to his own whims. Just the thought made a shiver of disgust roll up and down his spine.

"If I may be so bold, why is that man not in chains? He must be manacled at once," Barbossa said in that accent, so proper. His words didn't slur together like they should have and he didn't add that odd cackle to the end of his sentence like he used to. Anna wondered if a piece of him was dead, if that warm center of lust for the sea had been crippled by his swim to Tortuga from the plank of the Black Pearl. She wondered if this was her fault.

"At the center of my palace? Hardly," George said in a slightly scornful voice, his eyes twinkling as if he was amused by the very concept.

"Hector. So nice to see a fellow pirate make good of himself," Jack sneered, his eyes filled with contempt and mistrust, as if he'd enjoyed Barbossa the pirate enemy, better than the shell of a man in front of him. Anna couldn't bring herself to understand the change, what had made him this way, leg gone and eyes vacant and face coated with white.

"Pirate? Nay," Barbossa said lightly, his face pinched in a way similar to George's and Anna wondered if all upper class men must wear that expression. "Privateer, on a sanctioned mission, under the authority and protection of the Crown," he intoned, as if they ought to try it because the benefits were lovely and the sky was blue and things were beautiful from this side of the line.

"As may be," Jack said softly, his gaze flicking between Barbossa's eyes and the wooden leg. "But what has become of the man I called enemy?"

"I lost him as I lost me leg, barren and alone without the Pearl, I had no choice," Barbossa said bitterly, casting his eyes to the woman next to him. "Not that ye gave me one."

Jack's eyes darkened and he took a step forward, as if daring the older man to speak again. "_Your_ misfortunes are not our concerns, and certainly not Annie's," he said quietly, his voice like gravel, rough and real. Anna flicked her gaze to him for a fleeting moment and took a step forward, her body close enough to his to warm his side.

"If I may be so bold," Barbossa said again, speaking to the king. "It may be prudent of us to invite the prince to this culmination of plans for the sake of the kingdom," he said amiably. Anna had frozen and Jack had moved, launching himself at the former pirate.

He was crawling across the table with murder in his eyes, his hands flinging things out of his way, food he had been intent on spattering against the walls like it would in Tortuga. His body burned, a fire he was unaccustomed to taking hold in his heart and pushing outward, threatening to take over and all he thought about was Barbossa on the floor, head lolling in unconsciousness and bruises beginning to arise on his bloody nose and split lip. Jack normally didn't like to fight, without a sword it wasn't much of a dance, but at that moment, he could think of nothing else.

All that mattered to him was making Barbossa pay for Annie's frozen body, her heart beating so loud he could hear it, her eyes blown wide and fingers trembling. He had to make him feel the same pain Anna was undoubtedly feeling at that moment, fear pumping through her body at a rate only she could describe but he could understand. He hated that look, that one she wore when Will was dying. It was the look of a powerless woman who'd given up hope. She didn't think Will was going to survive just like she didn't think she could stand up to her father, could beat him, could push through the fear gripping her body. Jack hated it when he caught glimpses of the woman she must have been in the year between their first adventure and her return to Port Royal.

And he had the cause in front of him. Murder rolling in his stomach and twisted, a snarl rising on his lips as the need to do another human being harm rose and took hold in his body. He felt guards grabbing at him, fingers bruising and rough, but he was pushing onward. This was as close to displays of his affection, his feelings toward Anna, as he got, and he couldn't control them.

And then another set, hands soft and callus's rough as they settled on his shoulder and his neck, insistent and unyielding. He allowed them to turn his head, finding himself lost in Annie's eyes as she looked back at him, pride and gratitude swimming in his eyes and he could see the fear fading, the edges of it folding in on itself as she drowned it out with something deeper, something he could only pray was reflected back at her.

She turned then, glaring at the slightly shell-shocked Barbossa in a way that reminded both pirates of the look she wore when she fought Jones and his army. That feral, animalistic rage and excitement, the mixture undefinable as she moved with the rain and the flow of her sword.

"If you have truly fallen so far from Grace, and sunk so low into the pits of propriety and law," Anna hissed, her voice unforgiving and hard. "Then you are my enemy. And calling upon my father will not save you, when your time runs dry."

"Our sands be all but run. Where's the harm in joining the winning side? And you do meet a nicer class of person," Barbossa said to both of them, contempt still in his eyes. Jack wondered how he'd managed to avoid flinching through Anna's threat. It was something chilling to hear the way her voice turned cold, turned impossibly strong and impenetrable.

"You sir, have stooped," Jack muttered, watching the way the others in the room seemed to come back to themselves, as if their conversation had been private, in a way. But by the way their gaze lingered on the princess, his little Annie standing strongly beside him, he doubted it.

"Captain Barbossa, each second we tarry, the Spanish outdistance us. I have every confidence you will prevail and be rewarded with the high station you so desire," George said with finality, bringing the conversation back to the issues in front of them. Barbossa bowed again, his wig falling in ratty tendrils around his face.

"To serve doth suffice, sir," he said brightly, as if he lived to bow down to another, as if the lust for freedom didn't still burn in his veins. But this was the future; this was what lies beyond the horizon. This was what was beyond freedom. "Maybe someday you'll understand," Barbossa spoke to the pirates, sounding older than he ever had.

"I understand everything," Jack said, subtly moving his arm up and pressing his fingers lightly into her back, a warning he was positive she understood. "Except that wig."

The free pirates leapt into action. Anna had moved fluidly, shifting against Jack's touch until she faced the guards, blocking his attempt to charge her with a punch upwards, followed quickly by her elbow in the same motion. He grunted, making a pained sound that almost made her wince in sympathy. Before he could move, she'd grabbed his rifle, turning in time to see that Jack was doing the same thing, his movements like a dance as he allowed the guard to hold on to his musket, simply wrestling him until the angle was to his liking.

Anna raised the weapon, aiming in the same spot as Jack, her body mere inches from his, and pulled the trigger. The kickback was powerful, and she was sure her shoulder would twinge in pain for weeks after, but she hit her target. A chain from the chandelier above them broke, sending the ornate light fixture swinging as if it were a pendulum. She wondered if prison was the pit.

Jack knocked out the guard with the butt of the rifle, sending him splayed and heavy onto the second. Without wasting time, Jack tugged on Annie's hand and the two of them leapt onto the table, distantly mortified at all the food being destroyed. Jack kicked a plate of food in a guard's face, and Anna quickly leaned over the Carteret, her motion almost a bow as she efficiently snatched a ring from him as he put his hands up in surprise. She grinned, slipping it on her only bare finger and nodded to herself.

Jack had reached the end of the table, flipping over a chair expertly and landing catlike, his movements inspiring something close to envy in Anna as she watched. He continued the movement, reaching behind him and gripping the same chair and threw it. It crashed through the window, shards of glass dancing in the light as they spilled across the floor. Anna watched in fascination as a guard attempted to catch him, only to slip on the handkerchief she'd thrown there and fall through the window, limps flailing as he tried to gain purchase.

Anna shook herself and kicked another guard in the chest, and ran across the table towards Jack. He was gripping a the tassel of the heavy curtains, and was watching her with something close to fascination in his eyes. She reached the end of the table, quickly flipping herself as she jumped, landing with her back to Jack and skidding on the glass until her back hit his chest lightly. He wrapped an arm around her almost unconsciously as a soldier fired and missed, hitting the rope attached to the tassel instead.

She felt her body be tugged upward roughly, and allowed Jack to keep his nearly bruising hold as they were launched into the air. Their feet touched the window ledge precariously, boots slipping against varnished wood and arms flailing as they attempted to retain their balance. Her heart pounded in her ears, the rush of excitement gripping her body like it always did, a never failing high she could count on with the danger of adventure. Her eyes were drawn to the swinging chandelier, a monolith of grandeur and wealth swaying towards them. She jumped. So did Jack.

She could feel bruises beginning to arise on her limbs as she slammed into the gold chandelier, fingers rushing to wrap around the gold spires and prayed nothing would break. Jack seemed to be having similar thoughts, and only she could read the desperation mixed with elation he often wore during an adventure.

She began climbing through the different pieces of the chandelier, gold bars weaving in and out of each other to make the perfect ladder. She found herself on the other side, quickly followed by Jack, and waited. She could feel the royalty's eyes on her, and found herself suddenly not caring. They couldn't hurt her when she was in her element. They couldn't touch her when she was so free.

Her feet hit the balcony in time with Jack's, boots scuffing the floor with their own marks. She laughed, a carefree and unique sound, when he leaned back over the balcony to grab the crème puff still attached to a chandelier spire. He took a quick bite, relishing the explosion of flavor in his mouth, the delicious, and the cream, before ducking into the shadows with Anna's hand gripped tightly in his free one.

At her baffled and insistent look, he offered her a bite, his eyes wide and pouting, cream speckled on his moustache. She smiled, leaning forward and took a bite, sighing in content as her eyes rolled back into her head.

"Worth it," she decided, a smile on her lips. "Can't find somethin' like this in any pirate tavern."

"They could've been more courteous," Jack commented, his nose scrunched as if just thinking about the servants of the crown made him sick. Anna nodded in agreement and pulled his hand.

"I know where to hide," she whispered, tugging on his sleeve in a way that reminded him of a small child, all innocence and imagination. It was something about her that never got old, small glimpses of the child she was on the inside reflected back to him and they were both like that. It was something he could understand and relate to. He let her lead them through the tangled web of ornate hallways and winding staircases, which she passed warily, as if expecting them to open up and reveal a gate to Hell itself.

She took a breath at the top of the stairs, as if it could give her strength, and rushed down them, dragging Jack with her. They moved soundlessly, ghosting down the stairs behind two guards, both carrying their effects and looking straight ahead. It was almost too perfect. A sly look in her direction and Jack moved skillfully towards the soldier on the right, while Anna took the one on the left. Sometimes Jack wondered how she managed to keep up with his mind, as they raised their arms as one and knocked off the hats violently in a flutter of wigs and fabric.

Anna watched the soldiers tense up, a sudden rush of fear flooding through their systems as their minds tried to connect what was happening the world around them. Movement followed a moment later and Jack and her were running, the stairs nearly blurring with her quick steps and she tried not to remember the way her father had thrown her from the landing the last time she'd been in the palace.

He'd gripped her hair, a smile vicious and bleak lighting up his features as he hissed in her ear, white-knuckling his hand to make her cry out. Her body writhed in an attempted to escape, every receptor in her body alive with pain and a fear too deeply embedded in her body.

It was rising in her now, an attempt to make her compliant as Jack pulled her behind a bureau a little too roughly in earnest, pushing her down onto the marble flooring with a smack. She stifled a groan, wondering if a bruise would rise on the tanned skin of her lower back. Images flashed behind her eyes, the authoritative after-burn of a slap to the cheek, the deep ache of a spine held in place too long, the hungry moan of a stomach starved for days. Her childhood was rushing back at her and suddenly she wished she'd never come. She wished she'd stayed behind with the Pearl and let Jack go to Gibbs.

"Love?" he whispered, watching her with wide, empathetic brown eyes that swallowed her under and brought her to the surface of her own thoughts all at once. His hand was rubbing small circles on her back, kneading the sore muscles with tender touches rarely afforded to her in daylight. "Are you alright?"

"M'fine," she muttered, blinking blearily as if just waking from a dream. She wished her past was only a nightmare. Jack held her gaze, eyes boring into hers and searching for something, anything to prove she was really okay.

She nodded almost violently, before shifted, reaching on top of the bureau for their effects, the soldiers having dropped them on the hard-wood surface as they ran down the ornate hallways. She stood, taking Jack's hand again and preparing to lead him through the winding, twisting hallways of her past.

He followed her closely, watching her movements with a critical eye as if waiting for her to collapse in his arms and curl in on herself. He'd been wondering when she would break, when that wall holding back her memories would break, shatter, and flood her mind with a slew of images he couldn't help hold back. He wasn't able to help her, and it made a gnawing chasm open in his chest.

She tugged him quickly into a dark room at the sound of thunderous soldiers running down the hallways, the cling of muskets against their bodies sounding throughout the wing of the estate as they ran by the door. Anna had her body pressed against it, her chest rising and falling too fast, hands shaking as they lay flat against the wooden door. Her cobalt eyes flicked across the room restlessly, and he lost himself in the reflection of the Caribbean sea for just a moment, moving closer to her almost unconsciously.

His body trapped hers against the door, heat wafting off of her skin mixt with the smell of the sea and her own natural perfume. It was intoxicating. He breathed deeply, a coy smile rising to his lips and he wondered when the last time he held her was. It felt like lifetimes, as he leaned closer to her, brushing his lips across her neck, smooth skin like a new brand of aphrodisiac to his senses.

He wanted to take her pain away, to suffocate it under the throws of passion and lust and love in a way that would leave them both spinning. His arm wrapped around her lower back, pressing her body into his as he kissed his way to her shoulder.

"Jack," she whispered, voice strangled and weak and he caught the wince in her words and let go, remembering her recent fall. Curses flew through his mind, but he quelled them, keeping his gaze calm in an attempt to provide comfort. "I-I'm sorry," she whispered, flicking her eyes away from him.

"For what, love?" Jack asked, his voice only a whisper in the dark room, shadows over lapping shadows around them in a blanket of black and suffocation.

"For not letting you in," she breathed back, her head dropping to his shoulder. There was a moment of silence and she sighed, her body shuddering against his before she spoke, and let him into a world he'd never really seen before, never pictured beyond the red haze of hatred and rage and fear for her health. "This was my room."

His head snapped up, eyes scanning the room with sharp, insistent eyes, and a part of him wondered why he even wanted to know. But there was a screaming sensation in his bloodstream, a _need _to know about the woman he held in his arms. The first thing he saw was a chair in the corner, silk ties hanging from the arms, legs, and around the back. His gaze moved on to an over turned wardrobe, corsets and gowns strewn across the floor under a thick layer of dust, a vase shattered in a corner, dead roses decaying by the bed.

It looked like a tomb; everything was grey, dying or dead, dust covering anything with the hand of a past untouched. No one had been in here since she'd left, her father refusing to open the door to his failure. Jack flicked his eyes back at her, wondering how far he could move into the walled, chaotic mess that was her past. Her life before the sea was closed off, barren to his touch, and he never passed through that veil. It felt like he was hurting her, and he never wanted to do that.

He leaned close to her, his lips parted in a moment of hesitancy, before speaking and opening a hidden reserve to the heart he never let another see.

"_Being your slave, what should I do but tend_

_Upon the hours and times of your desire?_

_I have no precious time at all to spend," _He recited, pulling her body closer to him, the cage of his arms protecting her as he whispering into her hair. Her arms wrapped around his waist, her breathing caught in her chest while he waited for him to continue as if his words were the divine words of a God forsaken.

"_Nor services to do, till you require._

_Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour_

_Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,_

_Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,"_ He spoke softly, calmly, as if they weren't under the pressure of the world and the crown and the soldiers rushing through the hallways. His voice was rough on the edges, like he hadn't spoken in years and he was finally showing his voice to the world. Allowing her into the heart he told people he didn't have and showing every scar, every imperfection, every part of him that loved her in a way he was still unused to.

"_When you have bid your servant once adieu;_

_Nor dare I question with my jealous thought_

_Where you may be, or your affairs suppose_

_But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought_

_Save, where you are how happy you make those."_ She never knew he felt that way. Never knew he viewed her past as some secret chamber of her heart she had refused him entrance to, leaving him on the outer reserves of her soul until she called him in, allowed him to see her scars over scars, ugly skin wrapped around her heart to protect the too-vulnerable emotions, feelings. She'd never thought of her own hesitancy, her own unwillingness to let another person see her as affecting Jack, as impairing his ability to see her the way he wished. All of her, with all faults, wounds, and fears.

Jack hoped she understood, hoped she saw how he viewed her, a temple, a master, a diety to be revered when he did not deserve her. He deserved to lay in waiting for the moment the gates to her heart opened to him. He would never think wrong of her, never hold her hesitancy against her as she learned to lean on him, learned to wrap her arms around his waist and fall into him, learned to be herself. He would bow his body and wait, that enough to prove his own love, adoration, a feeling he'd never experienced willingly drawn from his chest as he ached to show her. Ached to prove that what he felt was real and what he wanted her to understand was unfailing; he was safe, a home she could count on, someone she could trust. He would protect her, and wait for the moment she could show him every wound and scar.

"_So true a fool is love that in your will,_

_Though you do anything, he thinks no ill," _he finished with a shuddering breath, the silence that over took them reflecting his own nervous anticipation, as if he was waiting for her reaction. A tear slipped from her eyes, tracing its way down her pale cheek in the dark room like it was declaring its mark on her soul. She shifted, drawing herself up to kiss him lightly, softly, a soul deep connection that could never be fully severed, not even by their own need for freedom. This was comforting, a slip of arms around the waist to contain her as her heart threatened to burst from beating too loudly, the off-tempo sounds reverberating through her body as she allowed herself a moment to forget. The memories of her father slipped past her skin like a morning breeze, followed quickly by the fear she should be feeling for her life at the moment. For a few ticking seconds, there were no guards, soldiers, impending doom, or endless chases. Only her and Jack. And it was enough.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hey guys! Thank you so much, to everyone who reviewed, please keep them coming! You guys just have no idea how much I look forward to your encouraging words. They meant to world to me. Honestly. Thank you so much for your continued support, and I hope to update sooner this week. Thanks!**

** -Han**

They couldn't stay in their own world forever, and when their lips drew apart, reality moved in. Anna's skin felt cold with Jack's absence, her soul yearning to be close to him again, to assure him that she loved him, that she cared. To prove that she wanted to let him in, wanted him to see every scar she wore on her heart, every wound carved in her consciousness by a man that should have been her protector. She wanted Jack to see her.

She would be lying if she said she'd been afraid, before, that he would hate what he saw, hate the huddled, desperate shadow of herself her father could turn her into. She was afraid that Jack wouldn't bother to fix her, wouldn't bother to try. And then she would be left empty. She would rather not risk it.

She hadn't known it was affecting him, that her unwillingness to speak was impacting his interpretation of him, of them. He thought she didn't trust him, thought that they weren't close. And the worst thing, to Anna, was that he was willing to wait for her, to hold every emotion in his chest until she was ready to take down her own walls.

Anyone who said that pirates didn't feel was lying.

She broke their kiss unwillingly, a gasp of breath drawing into her lungs like a piece of heaven and her body shuddered. Jack moved back slightly, his eyes flicking to the broken and dusty room, the place she had known as prison. His gaze moved back to her, and his eyes had never looked deeper, like she could fall into them and find what heaven there was, find a god, find meaning in the life they lived. She tried for a smile, the action weak and shaky.

"I'll tell you everything," she whispered, and there was weight to her words. "I can't keep running from it, the farther I go the closer I get to the heart of it all. I can't keep ignoring the past." Her voice grew stronger as she spoke, her fingers twitching anxiously under his scrutiny.

Jack nodded slowly, a flicker of something that seemed like hope, seemed like passion, before it was eradicated. Like the tides had turned, the pirate in him was back, a coy look and a spark in his soul that flooded through his veins like fire, like flames licking away at his abandonment until he was flying freely with no restraints.

"The past can wait," he said, his voice softer than the look in his eyes. "Until London is far behind us."

"Thank you," she whispered, a gentle smile rising to her lips, something that went further than skin deep, went all the way to the heart she only let Jack see. She hoped he understood that. She hoped Jack could see that he was the only one allowed to know her, allowed to read her skin and her soul and gain what knowledge he could from it. He was the only one she loved, the only one she trusted, cared for.

She prayed he knew that.

"I believe I saw a window across the way," Jack commented lightly, moving further away from her to the door, his steps even and assured, as if trying to prove to Anna that everything was okay with body language alone. Their moment had passed, carried away on a wind only they knew of. A soft smile crept to her face at the thought, because she was the only one Jack showed this side of himself to. She was the only one he trusted enough to bare his own scars, wounds on his heart and on his soul, the secret reserves of his mind, where he wanted a gentle touch and soft words. Pirates weren't supposed to want that.

But she could give it to him, without him ever having to ask. Maybe that made up for her own silence, her own unwillingness to let him in.

The click of a lock drew her back to earth, as Jack opened the door slowly, poking his head out into the hallway to check for movement. They'd wasted too much time, and she could hear the distant thunder of boots on the marble flooring. They would start checking rooms, pushing open ornate doorways and scanning each bedroom with quick, decisive eyes. She and Jack were running out of time.

She was moving before she really knew what she was doing, pushing Jack out of the way gently, and sliding out into the hallway with decisive movements. Jack knew to follow her, matching her steps with his own until they made it to a window, the view of London's dingy streets almost overwhelming to her, but she pushed on.

Jack almost called out, almost let panic take over his vocal chords and voice his distress when Anna didn't slow as she approached the windowsill. She jumped, vaulting herself out into the heavy air of London, twisting her body mid-air to grab onto the banners hanging over the streets. He couldn't see her body, once she folded herself into the mold of a hanging flag.

The sound of coming guards was growing, a cacophony of sound bearing down on his eardrums, and making his heart pump faster, thrumming through his body at a rate he couldn't begin to describe. He moved onto the window, his hands gripping the frame tightly. He caught a flash of red in his vision, the sound of muskets clinging against each other as footsteps gained speed.

He jumped, his fingers gripping the rope tightly, calluses coming in handy as his hands fumbled to gain a steady grip. He could hear a faint snigger from Anna as his eyes blew wide and his mouth opened in a silent scream of panic as his fingers slipped. He slung his legs over the rope and clung to it, his muscles shaking from the strain as his breathing struggled to stay even. He cast his eyes behind him, and saw Anna in the same position, her body crumpled in on itself in an attempt to make her body smaller.

He could see her limbs shaking behind her bravado, that same, archaic fear in her chest wanting to rise, wanting to consume her. Jack had seen her change, the deeper they got into the castle, seen her revert into the child she used to be, the one who bent to her father's will. Jack wondered if her father would ever be anything other than the abstract thought he was to Jack, an unnamable force in the dark, a shadow in Anna's eyes. He wondered if he would ever meet the man behind the fear in his lover's heart, the monster she feared more than death, more than anything they'd ever faced together.

He took a breath, trying to steady himself and trying to gain the confidence to move again all at once. They couldn't stay here, hovering above the scum-ridden streets like the guardian angels the people didn't want. Like warriors who'd fallen from grace. He heard Anna curse, felt the rope he clung to jerk violently as her body slipped, her legs dangling in the empty air and kicking in an attempt to right herself.

It was too late. A guard had seen her, and the shrill tone of a whistle broke the chaotic peace of the streets. Eyes landed on them, guards and peasants alike aware of their presence, the snakes in their midst. Anna breathed deeply, gripping the rope she held to tightly, her skin feeling the strain as the rope burned against her calluses. She heard the frantic shouts of guards as if from a distance, their words muffled by the blood rushing through her ears and the sound of a sword hacking away at rope. Their rope.

She cursed again and braced herself, praying that Jack wouldn't fall on top of her. She didn't think she could handle any more bruises. Not since their brief, but dangerous stint in the Amazon jungle, where they found that Jack _couldn't _speak the tribes native language. Nor did they think of them as gods. It was times like that, that the pirates missed the Pelegostos.

She felt air beneath her, rushing too quickly past her body, and felt a hoarse scream rip from her throat and bounce off the buildings around them. She heard it echoed in Jack as they plummeted towards the ground. Anna jerked her body, using the rope as leverage to swing them out of the way of a young boy, and slamming her body against a carriage door, drawing a deep hiss of pain from her body as she struggled to gain hold on the roof. She fleetingly saw Jack dive into the window, landing him face-first on a society woman's lap. Anna smiled dryly, wondering what piece of jewelry Jack would steal, and started climbing. Her fingers slipped, the frantic beating of her heart drawing out her panic as she fumbled for a grip. Her boots skidded across the polished wood door as she lifted herself up on to the roof of the carriage, the edge biting into her stomach as she pushed herself to her limits.

Finally, she stood on to the roof, breathing deeply with her arms extended for some form of balance as the driver maneuvered through the busy streets. Her heart pounded in her ears, an attempt to prevent her flight instincts, her wish to run away from the impending threat of her father and of the gallows the red soldiers represented as they slithered their way towards her. Before she could take another breath, Jack was beside her, crouched catlike with an earring dangling from his lips. She rolled her eyes and took it from his mouth with nimble fingers. He allowed her to, watching her with interest as she moved her hair to put on the piece of stolen jewelry.

He sent her a quizzical look, one that bordered on exasperation as she finished. She shrugged, wondering when exactly they moved from speaking with words and voices mingling with each other in the salty air to only a look to communicate their thoughts.

"What? It was pretty!" she defended, watching him roll his eyes with a small smile. He stood, eyes scanning the moving maze of the streets just below them.

"Next turn," he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear as they crouched low as the carriage tipped to the right on a sharp turn. Standing again, Anna could see Jack's move before he made it, and gripped his hand in hers, soft skin and calluses pressing against each other in a moment of mutual companionship. She wondered what onlookers must be thinking as she took the step, and jumped from the roof to land evenly on another carriage. Jack's boots impacted the carriage only a moment after her, but she could feel his imbalance through their joint hands. He stumbled, his other arm swinging wildly in the attempt to regain his sense of equilibrium. She jerked him back, keeping him from falling to the blurring streets below as their carriage gained speed.

A shot fired from one of the soldiers, and Anna jerked her body away, her hand separating from Jack's. The space between their fingers seemed like lifetimes, seemed like years between them as Jack fell backwards, landing on the original carriage as it banked left. He skidded across the polished surface, tumbling off of the other side while Anna's loud curse of worry and anxiety threaded in and out of his ears. He landed in a coffin, something he had prayed to never end up in again, after what he went through to retrieving the drawing of the key that would set him free of his contract with Jones. Had that only been a year ago?

It seemed like a past life, like the ghost of his old fears coming back to haunt him in the form of an empty coffin in the middle of the heart of London. He scrambled to stand again, casting his eyes around the chaos in an attempt to find Anna. He grinned when he found her, kicking a guard and using the momentum to vault herself onto a coal cart. He laughed, a full and free sound when she started throwing pieces of the hard rock at those chasing her.

Jack moved, violently catapulting himself onto a wooden plank and using the momentum to step up onto a man's head and launch himself onto the coal cart. Anna spared him a smile, a quick thing that lasted only a moment, a moment long enough to assure him she was okay. There was a bruise forming on her cheek, a bloody scrape on her elbows and knees, where her breeches had ripped. But she wasn't beaten, wasn't running away from him and his insanity, the chaotic swell of the ocean he carried in his chest. He would have thought that she would grow tired of him, would have grown to hate the bruises and the scars and the constant living in fear. But she hadn't.

He smiled back, moving quickly to the front of the cart and pushing the driver into the street with a quick jab of his elbow, burring the offending appendage into the driver's ribs. The older man fell the dusty road and Jack took the reins, jerking them off in a direction that suited him.

"Jack you son of a-" Anna's scream was cut off by an abrupt groan as her body slammed into the bars on the opposite side of the cart.

"Sorry love!" he shouted back to her, finding that he meant it. She groaned in response, righting herself slowly and crawling to the front. Her blackened fingers wrapped around the back of the seat as she pushed her body over the barrier and landed roughly next to Jack. He was hard pressed to think of a time she'd looked more beautiful, her hair in disarray and black marks of coal drawn across her tan skin.

"Next time," she breathed, her voice sounding strained and unsteady. "I'm driving." She ducked down suddenly as the order was given for the soldiers to fire. Bullets bounced off of the coal, the reverberating sound of a shot bouncing off of the walls of her mind. She cringed at the sound of shattering glass and the distinctive whoosh of fire igniting the coal they carried. Her body pressed closer to Jack's on instinct, flashes of a burning ship and a need to save the young cabin boy rushing through her system. These things, her past incarnate, built her, made her who she was. She couldn't rid herself of the carnal fears she harbored, the memories she longed to forget, the pieces of her past her heart still held onto.

She felt Jack's arm wrap around her, taking the reins in one hand as he tried to communicate a form of comfort she could understand, a language she could speak. The touch only lasted a moment, long enough for her to believe he cared.

The cart hit an uneven patch of concrete, making it jump violently, catching nothing but air for a moment as Anna let loose a sound of joy and exhilaration. The flames were left behind them as the coal dumped onto the concrete, blocking the guards on foot as the remainder of the soldiers rode their horses through the wall of licking fire like it was the gates to a hell darker than their souls, bringing them closer and closer to the two pirates.

She turned back to face the road ahead of them, when Jack pulled her roughly to the side. Her body impacted the cement roughly, skin peeling away against the stone and her arms sheltering her head. She heard the cart run into a bread stand, knew that Jack had meant to save her. She struggled to control her breathing and dragged herself behind a group of barrels, pausing only long enough to spit out a mouthful of blood.

She shuddered, successfully hiding her body behind the boxes and barrels, her eyes cutting upward long enough to draw a strained chuckled from her chest. Jack was left hanging, swinging back and forth from a bar sign, his face nestled between _The Captain's Daughter_'s wooden breasts. It was the funniest thing Anna had seen in too long.

Jack grinned triumphantly as he jumped down, landing catlike and easy on the cobblestone with a winning gleam in his eyes that instantly faded. A lone soldier stood in front of him, his gun extended, arms shaking under the weight of the situation, fear at the thought of facing the infamous pirate.

"Filthy pirate," he muttered, cocking the gun and taking aim.

Jack flinched when a shot sounded, but felt no bullet ripping through his skin, felt no impending death, no blood flooding through an open wound, didn't feel his heartbeat slowing. Didn't feel anything. The soldier dropped, his body slumping to the ground heavily, blood pooling around his head, staining the cobblestones with the last few seconds of his life.

Jack turned, expecting to see Anna, standing strong and assured behind him. She was there, her body being supported by a shadowed man, who moved carefully into the light, a smoking pistol in his free hand, as the other arm wrapped carefully around a limp Anna. His touch was gentle on her body, careful not to jolt her injuries. Blood trailed its way down her quickly whitening skin, making exotic patterns Jack didn't want to read. Her eyes seemed listless, rapt on the ground as she struggled to control her labored breathing. Her fingers trembled as they fumbled for the grip of her sword, as if the touch could give her the strength she needed to stand on her own.

Jack suddenly wondered how she was still alive, after he'd dragged her over the worlds and back, let her body take hit after hit while he managed to escape the worst of it all. He hoped, prayed, that she would make it out of this adventure, and maybe he would learn to treat her better, learn to work with her, instead of just around her. He couldn't keep pretending that he wasn't too reckless with her, couldn't keep acting as if she wasn't too daring, too on the edge of everything. The combination of both of their lusts for freedom and adventure was going to kill her. And he would be left alone.

"Hello, Jackie," Captain Teague greeted him, saluting his son with the pistol, smoke still curling in the air around them.

"Hello, Dad."


	6. Chapter 6

**Hey guys! Okay, so thank you so much to everyone that reviewed, I was just wondering, people that haven't, and I know you're out there, could you pretty pretty pretty please review? Next chapter is ANGELICA, and probably a teensy tiny bit of romance on the Jack/Anna end, some fighting. If you want that before this time next week, I want six reviews. Not too many. But please, please? –sniffles-**

** -Han**

_The Captain's Daughter _was not the nicest establishment to have been graced by Jack Sparrow's presence. It was dirty, covered in a layer of grime reminiscent of Tortuga and the sound was overpowering, pressing down on his eardrums like thunder on the sea. Men and women were falling over each other, hoarse laughter floating through the dank tavern at a volume and mirth their stories probably deserved. Jack wondered how they could stand to subject themselves to this prison of dirt and decay.

His father was still supporting Anna, and the younger man had to force himself not to reach out and gather the woman up in his arms. That was crossing an invisible line his father had drawn in the sand when Jack was still young enough to be impressionable. But Anna's body was slumped over, looking drunk and easy to passing men and he felt a growl rising in his throat as men walked to close, brushed their bodies against hers, and subtly allowed their hands to graze her skin.

Jack shifted, the light from the open doorway behind him casting shadows across his face as he glared dangerously and let his fingers twitch over his sword. His father gave him an almost proud look and carried her to a table, setting the woman down gently. She nodded, something like a thank you in her listless eyes as she moved, unwrapping one of many sashes around her waist and set about applying pressure to her wounds. Jack rolled his eyes and took it from her with nimble fingers, brushing hair away from her temple with soft touches and applying pressure to the slowly bleeding gash. She winced softly, the only indication she was really there, and glanced significantly at Teauge.

The silent Captain nodded softly, turning around and catching a wench's attention. "Three mugs of rum," he requested, his voice like gravel, slow and rough and tumbled all together and she distantly wondered if Jack would sound that way when he was older.

"Four," she corrected, intent on cleaning the many scratches she carried. Her breath caught, a painful tug on her ribs and she wondered how badly they were damaged this time, resigning herself to more pain later. "Jack, next time, it's going to be you who deals with the consequences of your schemes," she said dryly, trying to shift slightly. He pressed slightly harder against her temple, holding the cloth carefully but firmly.

The tips of his fingers brushed against her skin, forcing shivers down her spine and she wondered how he was able to affect her so completely, like she couldn't function without a connection to him. She felt complete. That was dangerous.

She didn't care.

She shifted her chair closer, jolting her injuries and not caring. Jack fixed her with a disapproving look, and she could hear Teague's low chuckle as she looked down and fiddled with her fingers. Their rum arrived and she took a long drink, allowing room temperature amber liquid to glide down her throat and soften the pain her mind with the haze of alcohol. Jack had been sure to boost her tolerance, proud of her when she no longer winced or swayed after a drink.

Before he took a draw of his own, he dipped the rag into the extra cup, setting it down gently on her temple, using his other hand to rub soothing circles on her wrist. She refused to follow her instincts and jerk away, and held sure in the presence of Teague. Her eyes flicked to him as he watched them stoically.

"Thank you," she said, finally coming back to herself under the influence of rum's soft touches. He inclined his head, seeming to think nothing of it, as she leaned almost imperceptibly into his son's touch. Jack was trying to hide the worrying look in his eyes, burying it under a coy, sarcastic look aimed at Anna.

She rolled her eyes, as if he'd said something to her. He hadn't. Teague smiled, watching the unspoken dialogue between the two as she shifted, pushing her hands against his chest as he grinned, shifting closer to her without jolting her injuries. He could almost see them joking with each other, pushing the other childishly to the edge of their patience, and then smiling softly to convey some sort of sincerity.

Jack was subtly pushing her towards a smile, any real communication that she was alright. She swallowed, the playful look her eyes dying as she winched again.

"I think something's wrong with my ribs," she said softly, seeming unwilling to say anything. Jack knew she was understating. Anna hated being hurt, and hated admitting it even more. She could bleed without a second glance, could look death in the face and not flinch, but the painful, wincing aftermath made her on edge. She didn't want Jack to have to go through it with her.

"Coughing blood constitutes wrong," Teague agreed as lightly as he could when so enraptured by their behavior. They moved around each other like pirates needed the sea, that inexplicable tie at the heart and you had to follow the pull. Jack played off Anna in a way that differed from the coy wit he used on everyone else. This was genuine at the core, a true companionship Teague hadn't seen in his son since his mother died. This was new, different, real. He wondered if that changed when they were alone, if their friendship deepened into something else.

Jack moved around her as if she was something fragile and strong all at the same time, treating her like glass and like she could handle it all at once. She moved like he was the sun and the moon, changing phases but always constant, always there and she could rely on him. Jack was like that, Teague decided.

"You what?" Jack asked, mouth dry and heart racing, because _that _wasn't good. But his voice stayed calm, soft in the boisterous and grimy room as if speaking too loud would shatter the illusion of 'okay.' The illusion that he'd cast over his mind that said she would always be there, that she was unbreakable. She had survived enough to put her on a diamond rock in his mind, something that would never change and stay strong and be there for him.

"It may or may not have cracked against the metal barrier on the coal cart when we were running from my former estate being chased by British soldiers trying to kill us for not going after the Fountain of Youth," she said dryly, the layers upon layers of sarcasm in her voice making Jack double over with a rough chuckle.

She would be okay.

He wasn't sure how he knew, but he was sure something was about to happen, something big enough to garner his father's arrival in the middle of London, and Anna would never allow herself to miss it. That was a bond they shared at the soul, the lust for an adventure was synonymous to the need for freedom. They wouldn't survive without it.

"Love, you must learn to be more careful," Jack teased, moving the cloth away from her temple and dipping it back into the alcohol and pressing it another wound. She flexed into it, hoping it would take the edge off and prevent an infection.

"That would mean never seeing your lovely face again," she reminded him with an attempt at a grin tinged with the pain radiating off of her body. Jack could feel it in the air between them, a frenzied attempt to shy away from the ache beginning to form deep in her muscles, making her movements stiff and uncomfortable. He resolved to be more careful with her from then on, a promise he'd made exactly thirteen times. He swallowed, hoping the number meant nothing.

"And we would never want that," he said softly, the teasing glint in his brown eyes dying out as she struggled to retain her calm, her mask of untouchable strength. She felt like she did after her father beat her for the first time, laying his anger onto her skin and creating patterns she would wear for weeks to come.

"Never," she agreed, her eyes finding the ground at the memory rising in her system. Her past seemed to stick to her soul here, in the oppressive fog of London. It invaded her thoughts and weighed them down, crushing her wings with sensory images from a past she would rather forget, would rather leave behind in the dust of the busy streets.

She leaned back in her chair, readjusting her body within the confines of her leather corset until the wound felt settled. She reached behind her, tightening the strings until it served as a support, keeping her ribs in place. Jack pressed his fingers against her side, feeling gently for an irregularity in the soft curve of her torso. If his father wasn't there, he might find this erotic.

He gave an approving nod, and moved away, unwillingly retracting his hand and settling back. He looked at his father for the first time since he was supporting Anna, keeping her from falling back to the hard cobblestone and saving his life at the same time.

Edward Teague was the man Jack had always wanted to be; a pirate with a respect for humanity at its core. He moved around death with easy grace, avoiding it when logic said it should have claimed him, the hand crushing out the sound of the sea and the grip on his sword. But Edward held on. So would Jack.

"I heard you were putting together a crew," Teague said finally, taking the silent invitation to speak. His eyes were trained on his son, but flitted to Anna more than once, a way of letting her know she was included in the conversation. Trying not to push her away under the shadow of his son's infamy. She smiled softly, reminding the old pirate of the woman who became Pirate King and wasn't too proud to show her nerves, who ducked away from any mention of her loving his son the way he could see she did, who he saw a spark in from the very moment she met his eyes.

It had grown into a flame now, a bright fire taking hold in her bloodstream and burning its way to her heart, where her lust for the sea and adventure was realized, was accomplished. She was complete in a dangerous way, hanging on to happiness by a thread as she let herself take the brunt of their journeys. Jack must be dizzy with misplaced self-loathing by now. Teague didn't think his son understood fully, but he knew that look. The glimmer in her blue eyes was the look of someone who needs the pain to know she's alive. A part of her loved it. He should have realized that when he saw her brazen courage in the face of the Pirate Lords, and the frantic energy she wore on her sleeve. She thrived on _all _aspects of piracy, even the ones that could kill her.

"If enough people keep saying it, then it must be true," Jack muttered darkly, toying with the lip of his mug. Anna shot him a glance, one that must held more impact for Jack than it did for Teague, as his son shifted subtly, gnawing on his lower lip.

"We're in London to save Mr. Gibbs and gather information," Anna said, her eyes staying locked on Jack's. The pirate nodded, his eyes betraying his excitement at only the mention of the rumors. Jack's fingers trembling with the overwhelming need to know the world, to map out every cave and sea and mythical object. He wanted Atlas to bow down to him after he was done, having seen everything there was to see. He wanted to know.

"On what?" Teague asked, taking a long gulp of his own rum, the warmth spreading to his mind until things were comfortable and familiar. He'd grown almost too accustomed to the drink.

"My mother," Anna said bluntly, wincing as she shifted unconsciously, used to talking in time with movement, her hands as animated as Jack's often were. She contented herself with fiddling with a ring, a simple silver band with an intricate carving on the side. She'd stolen it from a Duchess two months ago, a rare thing to find something so simply beautiful beneath all the glitzy gold and jewels. She liked it. So she fiddled. "And of course, other exploits. Immortality is still the cards."

"I heard where you're headed. The Fountain," he said cryptically, passing the comment on her heritage with only a side long glance. Piracy in the bloodline usually ended with more blood spilt than left in the veins.

"Have you been there?" Jack asked, leaning forward.

"Does this face look like it's been to the Fountain of Youth?" Teague asked with a look flicking between sarcasm and serious, emotions hard to read on a face etched with the lines of wind and rain and the force of the sea. Anna wondered what he'd sailed through to make it to this point. His stories must draw crowds.

"Depends on the light," she said amiably, taking another drink and smiling when both men chuckled softly. She'd found home, a place where she fit. It was something foreign and something awe-inspiring and something beautiful. Like the sunrise, when you can still see the north star shining, and the light sparkles off the water and blinds your eyes. It was like that. Where you're wondering when you'll be able to see things clearly, and appreciate the beauty of it all, the way you fit so perfectly into the chaos.

The way she belonged.

"Son, the Fountain. There be items required, for the Profane Ritual. Two Chalices," Teague said, his eyes more earnest than Anna had ever seen when he flicked between the two of them, his right hand still wrapped around his mug.

"From Ponce De Leon's ship," Jack supplied, nodding along. Teague showed only mild surprise, an expression that seemed almost unnatural on his stoic and learned face.

"We had a brief visit to the Amazon," Anna supplied, hoping to eradicate that look. "We managed to extract knowledge of the ritual, thereby losing interest in gaining eternal youth through the Fountain."

"Neither of us appreciates the cost," Jack picked up, as if it were natural to finish her sentences. His eyes were more serious than Teague could ever remember a kind of dark that reflected the turmoil on a soul. Jack was deeper than his status let on. Anna was reflected in it, and in the way he moved around her, treated her, seemed to breathe and think in time with her. They were in sync with each other and the tides, something most pirates didn't find possible. But they were doing it.

"Pirates are supposed to cheat their way into _no _price," Anna added, twisting her ring again and preventing herself from reaching through the distance and the smell of rum and the cacophony of sound, and linking her fingers through Jack's.

"Sound point she makes, eh?" Jack said, pointing at her and taking a swig of rum in succession. Teague looked slightly impressed, almost proud as the two rough-on-the-edges pirates staved off their desires in favor of human life. It was moments like that that made life worth living, the world worth exploring.

"But it seems to me that the crowns of Spain and England wish to capture the key to eternal life," Teague said softly, watching the two of them. Anna's eyes darkened, the blue seeming clouded out by a venom even Jack found foreign. It reminded him of how she looked when fighting Jones, that frantic, desperate, hatred and rage.

"I would sooner die than see my father gain immortality," she hissed, a sound so low only Jack could hear the pain behind it, the raw fear. He nodded, an anger rising in his chest at the thought, and gripped his glass with nearly enough force to break it.

"Then what we need…is a mode of transport," Jack said coyly, that hunger back in his chest and in his heart. A need to protect the woman beside him, his own interests, piracy, and quite possibly the world. But, mostly the woman beside him.

He would never admit, not even to her, the sheer impact she had had on his life. From the very moment he saw her on the edge of the docks in Port Royal, he was fascinated by the enigma that rolled behind her eyes. Captivated by the voice that wove in and out of her soul on a deserted island. Drawn to the wild elegance of her movements, the control of her sword. She was something different. And Jack craved different.

And she continued to surprise him.

She kept him interested, in line with his own moral compass, ready and willing to jump into another adventure, and soothed with the soft touches only a lover could accomplish. Like she was tracing patterns on her soul.

He could return the favor by eradicating the plague on her heart, the fear in her soul that ran rampant and suffocated the fire he had come to crave. The snarky comments, her ability to keep up with him, the light in her eyes when she smiled, her stubborn attempts to push away injury, the way she loved him without changing him.

He could save her from this darkness..


	7. Chapter 7

**Hey guys! It's nice to see you again you beautiful readers (well I can't see you but by your reviews I can tell you are sexy, sexy reviewers.) Please keep providing me with the sustenance that your reviews stand for. I need your words! –dies- I'm in a good mood, if you can't tell, and I think you should help me keep happy by reviewing like an amazing (sexy) person.**

**-Han**

"_My heart is pierced by Cupid; I disdain all glittering gold…"_

The sad, drunken attempt at music reached Anna's ears before she was sure of what it was, casting her eyes behind her in an attempt to find the source of blubbering laughter and quaking voices weaving through the thick air around them. She pressed her lips together, deterring herself from singing with them, and adding her own abandonment to the mixture or rum and sea salt and smoke. A brief smile rose to her lips at the sight of the sailors, nearly falling over themselves with lust in their eyes and mugs in their hands and dirt caked on their faces. They seemed honest enough, Anna thought with something close to contempt.

"They're signin' up sailors right now," Teague said quietly, his voice pulling her back to some form of reality, where her ribs hurt and her head had finally stopped bleeding and her body was leaning towards Jack as if he gave her strength. The old Captain locked eyes with her, the blackness of his gaze yanking her down and pulling her under and water was pressing in on her head as she sunk down, pressure mounting, the need to breathe rising. Whatever he said next would be important, it would hold the significance of Divine Law, of a Goddess's words whispered on the wind, of ancient prophecy given slowly as if he knew he shouldn't give it all.

The pause carried on, and Anna leaned in, resting her forearms on the table in front of her with careful movements, her eyes caught in the older man's with an intensity Jack could only name as chilling. It sent shivers up his spine and left him reeling, that intense look was always something powerful.

"You are not the only one chasing the way to youth…from what I hear another pirate is out for it, and they won't let anyone get in the way," he paused, as if he had said something that carried tons of weight, the weight of the sea itself crashing down on her shoulders as Anna struggled to comprehend what he meant. "The Fountain will test you, mark my words."

She nodded, toasting him in time with Jack and drinking away any traces of her hesitancy. The impending adventure would require more of her than any other, of that she was sure. She just didn't know what was coming, what lay beyond the hazy rim of the horizon. She was sailing blind with no one but Jack beside her. But that would always be enough.

She turned back to the sailors singing, somehow knowing that Teague was leaving, slipping silently into the shadows and melting into the people like the survivor he was. She wished she could speak with him, really speak with him, learn something about the enigma he stood for, the mist that claimed Jack had a past, had a childhood. The thought was frightening and addicting all at once.

"_There is nothing can console me, but my jolly sailor bold!" _

Jack stood, offering his arm without bothering to glance behind him, his father was gone. He'd known it from the cryptic nature of his last words. Teague had always thrived on the same sense of the dramatic that Jack did. They were similar in that way, if not any other way. Their drunken sway was unique to them alone, their eccentric nature a bright sun in the darkness of their worlds. They were unique and the same.

But Anna had never treated him as if he was a copy of anyone else, as if his makeup directly related to the skin and the bones and the muscle on Edward Teague. She looked at him as if he was the only man like himself. He smiled, helping her stand and somehow knowing she could handle the movement.

"Bets?" she spoke suddenly, jarring him from his musings with a lightness in her voice that sounded distinctly false. Her eyes flicked to his quickly, and away just as fast, intent on her steps and the small wince walking drew from her lips.

"Depends on what we're bettin'," Jack said with a devilish grin, subtly allowing her to lean on him more, taking more of her light weight onto him.

"We're going to have to fight someone in the next five minutes," she said blandly, seeming to twinge at just the thought. He rolled his eyes, brushing a fond hand across her cheek.

"You worry far too much for someone as cunning as you, with someone as perfect as I," he joked, letting his gaze turn affectionate for a moment, a flicker she could hold onto. Affection was hard to come by in the world around them, and they didn't like to show weakness to those who could be enemies. But she seemed like she needed it.

"Two shillings," she said, pointedly ignoring him and holding up her two for bet. He sighed and nodded, showing his own. She gave an approving nod and allowed him to slip into the shadows, intent on the fat sailor who'd led the song. She stayed back, fingering her sword and swaying her hips as she walked towards him, as if she could be interested.

The silent way she and Jack split only made her sure of his trust, something that seemed so foreign, so ridiculous to insinuate, but it was there. She smiled, an invitation to the stuttering man in front of her and she wondered if she was really that beat looking, that dragged-through-the-streets kind of barely alive she felt. She wondered if he was disgusted, frightened by the dots of blood on her clothing and the smell of rum and sea water and sweat and _Jack_ that she could never seem to be fully rid of.

Scrum had probably never seen a more beautiful woman, not since he'd turned fourteen and had seen his first whore on Tortuga, because her face will forever be imprinted into his mind as beautiful. But this woman wasn't caked-on, pinched-in, or pinned-up. She was a kind of wild free he didn't understand. Every inch of her seemed to have seen worlds he could only imagine, scrapes on her skin and jewelry adorning her wrists and neck. A sword hung on her hip, the only part of her that looked effectively polished until it shone like a diamond in the dingy bar. Her brown hair swirled around her face like waves on rocks, in disarray but somehow still beautiful. Her eyes were luminous, nearly captivating as she moved forward, leaning almost imperceptibly to the side, a hand resting flat against her ribs, over her corset. Her body seemed wiry, lean muscles only adding to the abrasive feminine nature of her body. She was more visually jarring than any prostitute he had seen, and she did it in a way he didn't quite understand. Like she was mist, never taking a form complete enough for him to ogle fully. She could be passed over on the street but once his eyes found her, it was hard to look away, like a siren calling him. She was fascinating and raw and untamable.

He leaned back in his chair, watching her move as if a dying man who had found heaven; enraptured. She dropped into the chair next to him with a mixture of elegance and roughness, her posture speaking of piracy and her eyes of a good soul.

"'Ello, love," he greeted before he knew what he was saying, leaning towards her as if she could tell him the meaning of life itself. As if she could lead him to the ends of the earth she seemed to know like the back of her hand.

"Hello yourself," she said amiably, her tone conversational and her speech wasn't as jarring as the other women, wasn't as ear-piercing. It wasn't musical like high society women, or throaty like wrung-out prostitutes. Her voice was like water over rocks, swirling around them with the coming tide, like the feeling of wind against his face in the early morning. "Who, might I ask, is recruiting for this fine venture?"

"That be Captain Jack Sparrow, fiercest pirate there ever was!" Scrum said excitedly, his fingers twitching with the promise of a grand venture. He paused when her eyes crumped in confusion, head tilting slightly in a fashion he found endearing.

"But what of his accompaniment? The Pirate Princess?" She asked, genuine confusion coloring her words as she spoke. Scrum paused, casting his mind back, knowing she should be right and coming up empty. He shrugged, having no answer, and swallowed uneasily when her soft smile turned nearly predatory. "And how could Sparrow be recruiting a crew, when I have only just left his side?"

"You claimin' our Cap'n to be an imposter?" Scrum asked before he could stop himself, an urge to be loyal taking hold of his body before he could stop it, pushing him to the edge of propriety. He hoped he wouldn't offend her.

"That be exactly what I'm claiming," she said, leaning forward just enough to keep his attention sharp on her while Jack slipped around. Scrum had a knife to his throat before he knew what it meant, before he could understand anything other than the way the hollow of her throat seemed to call him as she breathed.

"Do you have any idea who I am, mate?" Jack whispered dangerously in his ear, sending a wink at Anna over his shoulder as the woman sat up, pulling her top closer to her chin with nimble fingers. She stood slowly, her movements just stiff enough to indicate something was wrong, and her face passive enough to prove she could handle it.

"_That _is the one, and _only _Captain Jack Sparrow, and you should show him some respect," Anna hissed before Scrum could speak, intent on proving she could handle herself as something other than the object he clearly viewed her as. "You would do well to know who your Captain really is before you set sail. Morning light may shine on your slavery."

"Does that make you-" he cut himself off, remembering the viciousness of the stories. He'd heard that Jack and Anna had returned to Jack's favored Nassu Port, and robbed it blind, sending the city into a crippling economic depression, until men and women were forced to move away. Another story had him reeling at just the thought of the two against the Greek Goddess of chaos, trapped with their backs against the walls of the earth, with no way out but down. They crossed the veil more times than anyone could count, and they were most dangerous when they were together.

"Anna Windsor?" Jack finished for him, pressing his knife into Scrum's thick neck. The smaller man wheezed, craning his body away from the woman he now considered a viper, and the man he couldn't help but be afraid of. "And I don't think she's too pleased with these events. You see, neither of us likes to be stolen, but it appears your _Captain _failed to include her in the dossier. And that, mate, is an insult if I've ever heard one," Jack said in a way that made Scrum think the pirate was trying to help him, save him from the destructive force that was his partner in crime.

"Take it up wiv 'im!" Scrum pleaded, pointing behind himself to a shadow on the wall, his eyes wide and begging and nearing the edge of his own mental capacity, a breaking point in sight. When he felt the pressure of a sharp blade leave his skin, he breathed deeply, swallowing air like it was a lover he'd been reunited with, and was promising never to leave again. He collapsed into his chair, a hand on his heart and his eyes closing, the image of a beautiful face turning hostile burned into his mind.

The stories of their team had reached all edges of the earth, tales of who they bested and who they killed and who they spared reaching the eager ears of sailors who had thought the Princess long dead, and Jack long free. He wondered how close they were, in the cover of a midnight blacker than the hell's they had crossed into, the blanket of nigh hushing them and their minds. Maybe they were lovers. He chuckled half-heartedly, doubting it.

They seemed too comfortable, and the tales of Jack's inclinations were nearly as legendary as the man himself. Scrum doubted there was a woman in the world who didn't want him. He doubted the man could stand to have himself tied down at all.

Jack slipped his hand into Anna's as they disappeared into the back room, not bothering to cast a glance behind them as they melted into the shadows. He felt the returning pressure of her hand, her fingers twining with his briefly, just long enough to prove that she appreciated it. His eyes slid to hers, a soft smile on his lips that made her feel warm, like his touch was lighting fire through her veins and his gaze was helping it race along.

"I haven't forgotten you, love," Jack said, throwing her back to Scrum's dumbfounded expression when she made reference to herself. Her expression was a mixture between a scowl and smile. "How could I?" Jack asked himself, pretending to talk to himself and knowing it was causing her smile to grow. "You are the brightest star in the sky."

"You ought to watch what you say, birdie, or you'll throw your reputation to ruin," Anna whispered conspiringly, her eyes dancing with amusement as she spoke. He smiled, brushing a hand along her cheek.

"And we'd hate for that," Jack said in a hushed voice, an echo of his tone when he whispered to her in the barren prison that used to be her home, whispered poetry he meant. He was only a slave to two things; his own burning lust for freedom, and to her addicting presence. The longer he was around her the more he craved, shoving the two together until adventures became a part of her definition. He was as devoted to her as he ever could be to another human being. The only thing he cared for more was the sea.

"We should go in," Anna whispered, indicating the next door that would lead them to the storeroom, a piece of hair falling over her eye. Jack pushed it away, his hand shifting to cup her jaw and pull her in for a quick, scorching kiss that left her body reeling and her mind clawing at any concept of reality. She didn't have time to let herself fall into the throws of red flames and heated skin and patterns of moonlight on his chest.

When he pulled away from her, Jack turned sharply; leading her into the next room and pretending like his body wasn't aching, begging on its knees for her. He shook his head, his lips curving up in a half-smile at the thought. They hadn't done much more than fall asleep next to each other in the early hours of the morning, long nights of shared kisses and heat and soft words and trailing his lips down her neck, but he hadn't wanted to disrespect her. That was important, dizzyingly important to him.

It seemed necessary.

She had nuzzled to his chest, pressing her face against his heated skin and slipped away into her dreams and Jack was left knowing he made the right choice, ad proud of himself. Because he fell asleep frustrated, and woke up to her half-dressed and wound around him like he was the only thing keeping her from drowning. And his fingers would draw lazy patterns on her shoulder, and when her cerulean eyes would open to the world, he would pretend he could see the Caribbean Sea reflected in them. Maybe he could. And Anna would smile softly, reaching up to press her lips against his, and whisper sweet nothings that meant so much more than nothing.

He shuddered to think of what his crew would say if they knew.

Anna pulled her hand form his, dropping it to her sword and pulling it free, her eyes set on the shadowed figure in front of them. Jack had barely realized they'd fully stepped into the room. He raised his own sword, staring at the copy of himself with distaste and something close to disgust.

"You've stolen me, and I'm here to take meself back," Jack announced shortly, his voice more biting than Anna had heard in a while, the cool edge driving shivers down her spine and she had to remind herself that she wasn't talking to her.

The figure's sword raised, glinting in the half-light of candles and yellow flames. Anna's eyes narrowed on the nearly feminine tilt of his head and of his hips. Jack didn't stand that way, he was masculine to nearly a fault. But this imposter bordered on girly. She rolled her eyes, wondering how long all of this would take. She wanted to get busy stopping her father from gaining eternal life.

"Well Jack," she said as if exasperated, her sword raised and at the ready, adrenaline already pumping through her system, necessary if she wasn't going to drop dead. Her wounds hurt but she barely felt them, the energy between her and Jack made it hard to feel anything but excitement and her own blood rushing through her veins. "Shall we?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Hey! okay, so, thank you so so so so much for all the support, I really appreciate every single thing you guys say…say more? If you haven't reviewed yet, I urge you to. It honestly correlates to how quickly I'll respond with a new chapter. Thank you so much, guys, though, really, it means so much. I love all of you, guys! don't forget to review!**

** -Han**

Jack moved in time with his impersonator, an archaic dance no one could fully replicate, his moves were his own. And this newcomer was trying to him. But Jack's movements could never fully be copied; the fluidity of his movements was something gods lusted after, like water crashing over rocks, he was more dangerous than he appeared. Anna could watch him for days, and never fully understand the grace behind his movements, the rough ability to move like he was built to do this.

The one playing him could never measure up; it was the only way Anna managed to keep track of who was who as Jack vaulted himself into the fight. The fray before her eyes seemed to block her out, an opening nonexistent as two swords rang out within the dark storeroom, fingers of candlelight playing with shadows across the two pirates. Anna watched, enraptured by his movements and waiting, stilling herself, body poised.

"Love, now would be fantastic," Jack muttered, ducking forward into a balestra and finishing the attack with a perfectly executed fleche. She smiled to herself, loving how controlled he was when he fought, how his form was always perfect and his face always impassive, yet the passion he let loose on his opponent was unmatched. She'd never met his match, and not even Will could truly best him.

Her grip tightened and she launched herself into the fray, making space between the two with a flourish of her sword and an easy glace of reassurance to Jack. Her ribs protested a quick jerk to the side to avoid a slash from the imposter. Anna growled low in her throat, the greatest indication to Jack that the fiery pirate he knew was rising to the surface, pushing back the pain of her past and the insecurities London brought down on her. He moved next to her, his shoulder bumping hers and he could feel the worried, painful tension melting off of her, pushing her outside of the recent wounds, the old aches. Her lunges held an edge of viciousness he hadn't seen since the Dutchman went under in a crushing black oblivion, a cruel smile on her lips that reminded him of Beckett's end.

She moved with him, letting his body guide hers as they parried the imposter with ease, the fake struggling and stumbling and trying to fend off two attacks at once and still retain the mannerisms he was emulating. The imposter spun, slashing wildly until Jack and Anna were forced to nearly bend in half to avoid the bite of a blade, and ran behind a blazing fire pit, a roasting pig on a spit between him and the crazed pirates.

There was a light in Anna's eyes that Jack would never tire of, a blaze of passion and excitement that never fully died but sometimes grew into an engulfing fire that lit her blood and ignited sparks in her movements. He could see the desire to let loose in a swirl of violence and fire and sea water pulsing through her body as she flitted around the edges of the pit, large flames casting ominous shadows across her face, looking like an agitated bird. One of prey, Jack thought wryly.

The imposter across from them, caught in a moment of stilled energy and heavy breathing, sword reflecting the warm light of the fire. Jack moved easily in the circle, his drunken grace a sway in a nonexistent wind while Anna glared across the expanse of flame as the imposter mimicked.

"Stop doin' that," Jack commanded, looking indignant at just the thought of someone being anything close to himself. Anna had mentioned to him once that being anything like anyone makes you unlike yourself and like another, and that would be a terrible shame. He agreed. But now it was him being compared, not Anna to the flaxen-haired and beautiful Elizabeth. Now they didn't have his impending contract drawing to a close with cursed ship on his tail. It was just him and his image, haunting him with the vicious smirk he wore so well.

He wondered how it was possible that this new apparition of himself was allowing him to see his faults so clearly, the stark outline of his mistakes worn against the impersonator's leather jacket and blackening silver. He recalled failed attempts at normalcy, an instance on being solitary, the intent to cause pain in another surfacing more often than he would like, and a recklessness that got others hurt. Will hung over the edge of the Black Pearl with a gun held in his own hand against his head, and Jack couldn't stop him, Elizabeth felt the raw pain of having her fiancé pulled away from her on Cutler Beckett's orders and Jack couldn't help him, Anna felt her brother ripped from her fingers by Jack's own choices.

She took hit after hit on his watch.

Blurred rage blanketed his eyes, and he was moving, launching himself across the space, felt the flames licking against the edges of his coat, and struck down. Steel on steel was a sound he relished, that close-to-death moment where your life is more beautiful than it ever could have been if he had lived a life without the reality of death. He didn't appreciate his life until he almost lost it. His father called him stupid, Anna called him free.

His imposter couldn't compete with this new energy, this feral need to eliminate the alter-ego of himself, the fractured image he held in his mind of a man not as strong as he liked to believe. He felt himself grinning, felt like Anna must have every time she let this passion take hold of her. He felt off balance and alive and on the edge and falling at once and he loved it.

He pushed harder, watching Anna smile at him and follow, always following like she was tied to him around the waist but it didn't inhibit her. She was still as free as him, and he knew it. So when she followed, he let her, smiled, held her hand because he wanted her there, but couldn't ask her to stay. She had to make the choice. When her sword entered his line of sight and landed a shallow flick along the shoulder of his imposter, he was sure.

He could read a flash of doubt across his imposter's face in a moment, a flash, a second and it was gone but that was enough. Jack pressed forward, allowing Anna to roll off of his back and appear on the other side of him as the Other attempted to feign left. He relished the small moments where her body was pressed against his, but nothing could distract him from the pounding of blood in his ears and the sound of steel reverberating through the air.

The ran onto a ramp, and images of a dusty smithy with light filtering through the rafters and a pair of fascinated eyes on him sprang to his memory, the flashes of a life when Will could have grown old and Anna loved piracy from a distance. But those days were gone and now all that mattered was his balance and the firm grip he applied to Anna's forearm as the barrels of rum pulled loose and started tumbling.

Barrels rolled beneath his feet, his body swayed precariously, but he didn't let go of the vice grip on his lover. Anna scowled at him, but couldn't deny the gratitude that rose in her chest at just the thought of his care. The imposter was not so lucky, the landing was faulty and the faint groan that rose from him sounded vaguely feminine.

Anna jumped, landing catlike on the dirt covered floor and not caring when it jolted her images. Jack eased to the ground with more finesse than he could get himself credit for as rum crashed to the ground and gave the appearance of blood spatter. The exotic patterns drew his attention long enough for Anna to take the brunt of another attack, her moves less graceful than her lithe body suggested, the edge of an animal in her movements.

A slash left and her body twisted, narrowly avoiding the stinging bite of steel she knew so well. Her body spun, violently kicking out a leg and finding only air as the imposter jumped back, climbing swiftly onto another set of ramps, swiftly moving onto the rafters with flexible movements. Anna frowned, watching the elegant tilt of Other's body and thought there was no way it could be a man.

Jack found an elevator, went up, easier than it usually was for him to keep up, or so it seemed. He grinned to himself as he stepped onto the rafters, glancing down at Anna with a wistful feeling consuming his chest.

"Where do I recall this?" Jack wondered aloud, loud enough for her to hear and chuckling at her huff of annoyance. Other moved, lunging at him with form just good enough to be masterful and shaky enough to make him grin.

"One day, Sparrow, one day…" Anan swore, though both knew the threat was empty. The amusement in her voice was clear to him, a warmth in his chest that nearly surpassed his need for a duel, for violence with rules, for a way to win and make something just a bit more clear. Fighting was easy, black and white, you won or you didn't, you died or you lived. There was no fractured image of politics and confusing swirl of emotions that love reflected in his soul like poison and ambrosia, heaven and hell warring in his body.

"One day you will measure up to anonymity, the enigma, the perpetually gorgeous pirate Captain of the Caribbean," he finished for her, dodging another swift attack by the Other, and refusing to let his grin drop. His footing was unsteady on the rafters, and he knew Anna was replacing his enemy with Will for a moment, the darkness of the room replaced by soft sunlight and a fascination she could never fully shake.

"One day I'll bring your head down from the clouds, and you may see I stand beside you," she grunted, and he realized she'd found a rope, slowly pulling her body up one painful inch at a time while her body protested, until she hauled herself onto a rafter with a kind of grace he couldn't describe; rough and beautiful.

"I'm not in the clouds," he said like a child, like this argument was more important than the impending flash of steel within his vision. The Other showed no emotion, a giveaway in Jack's eyes. He could never play the Great Jack Sparrow without the telltale brightness in his eyes, the glimmer that spoke of lust and love and sea and life and death and beauty. "I'm in the sea, you ought to know that," he said calmly, covering her quickly as Other feigned right and swung his sword towards her neck.

"Would I still be here if I didn't?" She asked, her words beginning to slur together with hints of enraptured involvement, pain, and the edges of her world was fading and sharpening too quickly. She turned quickly, cutting loose a pulley system before Jack could be sure what was happening, wrapping an arm around his waist as if she was the strong one.

They swung air beneath them as the rope changed hand and she allowed him to carry them, turning in his arms to kick out, pushing the Other back against a moving bar, sending the imposter falling through warm, dry air and towards another high stack of barrels swimming with the liquid courage sailors needed to sign their first roster.

The two pirates landed easily on the ground, Jack leaning down towards a river of rum, more holy than the Styx before him and took a long swallow, relishing the pleasant burn that gave him just enough to press on, to move as Anna needed him to, a reflection of himself in her endless blue eyes. He often wondered where he would be without her, still search8ing circles around the world for a way to live forever with no reason other than the horizon never fully in reach. It was odd, he thought, to have some_one _worth living for, worth chasing to the ends of the earth and a part of him could never tire of it.

A woman had never held so much meaning to him, and the easy smile she gave as he wiped his mouth made the little things worth it, made the threat of a sword and the imposter he fought seem miniscule, seem easy. She was his favorite puzzle.

His attention was drawn back when Anna growled, a feral thing he could admit made him shiver, rolling pleasure and lust down his spine. He wondered if she would make that sound when she hovered above him, biting her way down his neck in the cover of darkness that could protect them from the rest of the world. He grinned, watching her take the offensive and loving it, quickly being caught up in the way her body moved, like a caged animal.

When Other punched her, a swift and quick move to the jaw that could never mean anything but bad form and bruises, Anna drew back a hateful look in her eyes and her body language demanding Jack to end this. It was surprising to him, even later when he would think back to it, that she was able to restrain herself enough to let him take the end, to let him finish this war the Other had started. A sense of retribution in his core that she understood, could read easily through a nose beginning to drip blood.

That was enough.

Jack attacked, too quick to really be seen, pushing Other back until his back warmed with the roaring fires that must be burning the pig by now, but he didn't care. The smell of burning coals and charred meat and spilled rum were consuming his senses and all that mattered was the way his sword clanged against his imposter's.

Other grunted, a sound Jack could read within the moment and he swore, sure a move he wouldn't anticipate was rising. A heavy stomp down on his boot had him running curses through his mind as a quick spin and kick followed, a slice of a sword he barely matched.

"Only two people alive know that move," he said softly, spinning confidently, an assuredness replacing his lust for violence, his need to hear the ringing of a sword. The tip of his blade caught the edges of the Other's wig, sending it flying into the fire pit, the sickening smell of burning hair consuming his lungs, but he didn't show it.

Long dark brown hair cascaded down in well-manicured waves, reminding Jack of intricate woodwork, carved by an artist's hand. Wide mocha eyes caught his vision, the first time they weren't caste in shadow, too murky for his liking, and he found he missed the blue. Before his attacker could recover he leaned forward, a moment of sensation passing over his skin like it was on fire but he wasn't tempted, something that would forever astound him. His nimble fingers reached out, and ripped, a fake moustache made of some type of animal hair stripped from the upper lip, exposing the fully dusky mouth of a woman that used to haunt his dreams.

He swallowed, stepping back far enough to brush his fingers over Anna's waist, an unspoken promise, a soft whisper of affection the woman across from his couldn't read. Blue eyes trained on the woman as if wondering if she could still attack, a satisfied smile rose to Jack's lips at only the thought.

"Jack, this woman looks like she had fallen into a mold made of you, I didn't know they had those," Anna said thoughtfully, the bright look that swam in her eyes made her seem to sparkle, shimmer like sun on the ocean, blinding. "I suppose this means I was right," she added, her eyes cutting to Jack for only a moment. "You did appear full grown, from the foam of the sea with a lust for freedom and adventure."

"And where did you find this one, Jack?" The woman asked, an alluring Spanish accent coloring her words until they flowed and sounded rhythmic, like music twining its way through his mind and his heart.

But he grinned, gold-caps glimmering in the half-light of burning fires and shadows that dragged like fingers against his skin. The moment was frozen to Anna, a trust she'd never really considered rising in her chest and somehow, the woman wasn't really there, she was an image reflected in a taunting mirror, the woman Anna had always wanted to be. Free in a way sexuality could mirror, overtly beautiful and wild. But Jack's touch lingered on her, his eyes flicked to her as if she was something soft, something beautiful in a way she didn't understand. She knew men found her pretty, found her an object of affection they could take to bed, but Jack looked at her as if she was as beautiful as the woman she still considered enemy _knew _she looked.

"Washed up in Port Royal with the same lust for freedom," he answered, his sword still raised and he made no move to be rid of it. The smile still rested on his lips, but discomfort was settling into his body. He needed answers, and the woman in front of him carried the weight of even more unanswered questions. "But what brings you to my dashing image…Angelica?"

The name seemed to have weight to Jack that Anna could never understand, that she could never fully read because she couldn't see past the smoky image that Jack was. She wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to ask him, to have him explain the mystery that surrounded him, the shroud he wore that covered him. She wondered if, when she finally spilled her soul to the pirate she could count on, that he would mirror her, whisper things into her soul that she could understand, whisper what he couldn't speak too loud because that would make them too real.

Anna wondered if the rise of Angelica would keep her form the soft secrets Jack could tell her, if it would stop words from leaving her lips and from bringing him into the world she never acknowledged. Where her father was more than just an abstract monster and her wounds were more than skin deep.

She wondered if this woman would stop her scars from healing and from reading Jack's, and she would be left with a dark sky blank of stars she could relate to, without the swell of the sea to lull her to sleep next to a warm and loving body.


	9. Chapter 9

**Hey guys! Thank you so much for the amazing reviews, they mean so so much. Please keep it up! I base my happiness on your words, I swear. Let me know what you think! I also got a question about possibly continuing this series. My answer? I honestly don't know. It will inevitably depend on the plot of that movie, and how close to cannon I want to go. But, I will probably do another installment, mostly because I love writing Jack and Anna, and I love their dynamic. And for what I'm planning at the end, most people will want some bits and pieces resolved. ;)**

** -Han**

Angelica peeled away the remnants of fake facial hair with nimble fingers, her eyes rapt on the two pirates in front of her, dark eyes tracing Anna's movements as if she could read them. The other woman was leaning almost imperceptibly into Jack, her breathing labored just the slightest, and a tangle of brown hair falling over her shoulders in a fashion Angelica could only describe as alluring. She looked rough along the edges in a way that Jack would no doubt find captivating, and she held an air of satisfaction in her obvious discomfort, as if the wounds she had accumulated were trophies.

"Are you impressed, Jack? I think I might have almost killed you once or twice there," Angelica said, instead of answering his question. The time for explanation would come later. For now all that mattered was the sway she held over the pirate Captain with the thick, sultry accent she knew she could command. Her eyes cut to the girl again, watching blue eyes flash with a fire she didn't fully understand.

"Almost, you find, amounts to very little in battle. Only dead and not dead register to the mind," Anna said sharply, taking another moment to breathe deeply and the grip on her sword didn't falter. Jack's black eyes found her form and his expression was soft, for a moment, a smile on the edge of his mouth.

"And as we are decidedly _not _dead," Jack took up for her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "You can rest assured that we are not all that impressed." Anna smiled, something brighter than Angelica had been expecting, and she watched the motion like it could explain things to her. Why Jack was finishing her sentences, why they moved like they were one person, and why Jack kept looking at her. "I am touched, though, by this most sincere form of flattery," he said, watching Angelica remove the moustache, beard, leaving her tan skin open to the air and watching Jack take it in.

She was just as erotic as he remembered, not quite beautiful with the over tones of sensuality covering the innocent being she might have been. Full lips didn't make him think of stretching smiles and soft words and the feather-light touches against his temple. Instead he thought of trailing fire down his chest, tongue escaping to taste, chaos and fire and rampage and blood pumping too fast. Eyes weren't the window to her soul, shining too brightly and burning into his skin like memories of fiery ships. They were lust-filled, tracing icy burns across his body as she took him in. Hands didn't grip his own, or a sword, they held his shoulders and his neck and scraped at his back and left imprints and claw marks.

"But why?" he finished finally, tearing his eyes away and wondering why the heat that was coiled in his stomach felt so different. Something about it was off, and he wasn't sure how to explain it. Anna's side brushed against his own, electricity seemed to shoot down his spine. He didn't move away.

"You were the only pirate I thought I would pass for," Angelica said, watching them with scrutiny as Anna blinked around a haze of pain and exhaustion and Jack stayed close enough to touch her.

"That is not a compliment," Anna chipped in, her voice strong despite her obvious pain. Jack nodded in agreement and his black eyes caught the flames and seemed to glow for a moment, singing Angelica's skin, but it felt distant. Removed. Like his gaze was a whisper when she wanted a touch. Then it was gone all together when Anna shifted, winced, and drew his attention.

"Are you alright, love?" he whispered, so low Angelica almost thought she imagined it. But Anna nodded, looking up at him with soft eyes, the blue reminding the other woman of the sky on days the sea might be forgiving. Endless and perfect.

"Yes," she answered, and the English accent made her sound proper, distinguished. Angelica frowned, almost glared, but restrained herself as Anna stepped slightly away from Jack to lean against one of the last standing pyramids of rum barrels. Dust flew up in swirls around her boots as she walked, and Jack watched the patterns they made. He didn't seem to take her answer, but looked away just the same, knowing she could handle it.

"Angelica-" he started, his voice sounding swept up in moments on the sea, seconds in Spain, minutes spent tracing the outline of his form in the half-light of the moon.

"Don't worry, Jack. I forgave you long ago," she said over him, her dark eyes cutting to Anna for a moment, expecting a response. The younger woman met her eyes, blue on black and held, but there was no emotion Angelica could read.

"For what? For leaving you?" Jack asked, bleakness in his chest that overrode the lust in his bloodstream, carried on waves of silken hair, Spanish accents, and rough touches. Once, he might have acted on it, this erotic grip on his heart. But not anymore. Anna kept drawing him back, a tether different from a chain, her hands pressing and molding his soul until he couldn't be defined without her. And to Jack, it wasn't a bad thing. It wasn't negative, dark, evil, vile. Not like it used to be to him.

Now her smile was addictive and her touch was intoxicating and he didn't need the black fires of lust to make life worth it, happy, invigorating.

"Recall that I left _you_," Angelica corrected, reminding him that she was there at all. Anna chuckled, rough sounding, alluring, like music. Her eyes crinkled at the edges, a light burning through the rough exterior and he remembered why he called her the brightest star in the sky. It was like coming home after years of chasing the wind, fingers clutching at something empty and then _finally _finding skin to trace, a touch he could feel.

"A gentleman allows a lady to maintain her fictions," Anna piped up, not needing to know their history to know her words were true. Jack wasn't left behind, he never allowed himself to be. He would sooner run from God than see himself rejected. Her side burned with its poor setting, but she didn't fully register it. She wanted to be back on the Pearl, laying on the deck and counting stars with Jack while she listened to him speak like wine was dripping from his lips. She wanted a symphony without the sound, the ocean beating and swaying against the ship to its own delight while she moved with it and with Jack like a Runaway, one who didn't care where she was going.

Instead she was hurting, leaning against rum barrels in a dusty store room while a pig roasted in a fire pit and a woman she didn't know spoke in Spanish music instead of words and enraptured her like she knew Jack must be. She wondered if anything would ever really be alright. With her past and the bruises on her soul from her father leaning over her and Jack being the mystery he always would be to her. And now his past was standing in front of them, taunting the fragile understanding they had.

One day the bonds would break and thunder would deafen her ears and lightning would be their only illumination against the rain and the darkness of their love slipping beneath the crashing waves. She could only wonder when it would hit, when her hand would be ripped from his and her lungs would fill with salt water and she would slip away, body aching for him. And goodbye would mean forever and they would no longer stand on the same side.

She never knew how to handle him, her wounds and walls blocking out reason and all that mattered was the feeling of falling and wind beneath her body as she crashing into his arms and he would be there, hearts beating as long as forever held. She never knew which way she was going, sails pushed the way Gods allowed, but he had been next to her.

And this woman, this Spanish vixen with almond eyes and a past with him could upset this balance, change things, push them somewhere new, somewhere dangerous. But Anna kept her thoughts to herself, knew somehow that Jack understood her fears. She would wait until they were alone to really speak, to let her voice break on the edges and sound just a bit vulnerable.

"Look, Sparrow, as long as my sailors get their money, they are willing to put up with any number of peculiarities," Angelica said dismissively, choosing to ignore the younger girl. Anna stood slightly straighter, head cocked to the side as if she was waiting for something, moved away from her resting place and paced out the room, aware of Jack's eyes on her. She wanted to get out, and she wanted a way that would keep her out of the way of officials.

"Ah. But there is one peculiarity which I would not put up with. I will be impersonated as 'Captain', nothing less," he said shortly, glaring at Angelica. His eyes flicked to Anna again, watching her take slow steps around the fire, her gaze moving throughout the dark room, following beams overhead and dusty rope and pulleys, trying to memorize them. She reminded him of a caged animal, one that needed open spaces, needed an exit.

"Well, for that you need a ship. And as it turns out, I have one," Angelica replied quickly, her wit able to bounce of his own and he could admit they did work well together.

"We could use a ship," Jack mused, and she was taken aback by the 'we', her dark eyes cutting to a seemingly unaffected Anna. To Jack it was logical, easy, simple, like Anna had been the missing piece in his plans.

A moment hung between the three of them, tense and quiet, save for Anna's constant walking, dust kicking up with her boots, her movements' fluid and natural, tinged with pain. Jack thought he would watch her for years if he had the time, just watch her move. The fascination that consumed him when she ran a hand through her hair, twitched her hand over her sword, moved like she was still in battle, never faded.

"I've heard tell you've been to the Fountain," Angelica spoke up, jarring him from his thoughts and pushing him roughly into the present, where the heat from the fire pit was starting to get to him and his neck was sweaty and his breathing was heavy.

"There's been a lot of here-telling going on these days," Jack quipped, suddenly annoyed by his own image, the front he helped to create. Whispery appearance of a man who could reach the ends of the earth, rearrange the stars with a twitch of his hand, fly circles around enemies, live forever, walk into fires and survive.

"The Fountain of Youth," Angelica whispered fondly, trying out the words on her accented tongue and Jack had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. Secrets and sorrows surrounding the Fountain must be foreign to her. She must not understand how you kept your flame eternal.

"Dearest Angelica, fret not, you still have a few usable years left," Anna said in a faux-doting voice, a patronizing smile on her lips as she gazed at the pulley system like it was more interesting than the rest of the world. Jack chuckled, didn't bother to hide it, gold-capped teeth flashing in the fire-light.

"She's just as charming as you," Angelica responded bitterly, running a hand through her hair and tousling it, making it fall over her eyes slightly. "But you didn't answer my question."

"Eh? Ah, regarding the Fountain. Waste of time," Jack said shortly, his hand falling to his waist and brushing his sword as if to reassure himself of its presence.

The doors opened behind them, Scrum rushing in and his eyes bouncing between the three pirates. His eyes landed on Anna, his cheeks coloring and eyes ducking away suddenly as if he were unworthy to gaze upon her. "Milady! I see unseamenlike fellows of officious-looking nature!" he said loudly, drawing their attention to him sharply, his panic quickly returning to his system.

Anna turned to Jack, a knowing look in her eyes that swam with unspoken fear, wiped away within the instant, gone before he could fully register its existence. She stepped forward, her eyes on the small, nervous looking pirate.

"Have they said anything?" she asked, her voice carrying more impact than Angelica had heard yet. It was commanding, like that of a Captain with the air of someone who understood their options and was ready for whatever came next.

"No ma'am, Princess ma'am," he stuttered, averting his eyes obviously, to her annoyance. Anna swallowed, her body alive with sensation, the heat from the flames bathing her skin while her blood boiled, nerves tingled, eyes brightened, she could _see. _

"Princess?" Angelica asked, the word sounded foreign and different and unnatural. "Jack, you brought royalty into our midst? What have you _done?" _she demanded, turning away from them and brandishing her sword threateningly.

"I may have unintentionally slighted some King or another," Jack said without shame. "Her involvement has little to do with the red coats following us." His eyes were serious and deadly, begging for her to make a wrong move, say the wrong thing.

"It's okay, Jack," Anna said from her position, body coiled for a fight. Scrum had finally moved, latching the door and piling boxes and barrels in its way, his movements quick and jerking with the sounds of uniformed footsteps on the other side. "I wouldn't expect some Spanish tart to understand the intricacies of English politics," she sneered, not bothering to hide her discontent.

"Politics being the rather diplomatic way you crashed into a passing carriage from the walls of your grandfather's estate?" Jack asked, a teasing glint in his eyes that lightened the room for her, brought Anna back to the moment. She smiled at him, laughing lightly as bodies threw themselves against the locked door, demanding to be let in under the name of the king.

"Or how you and I swung from a chandelier in order to steal a pastry," Anna added, gesturing with her sword as if speaking with her hands.

"Or the most complete political policy there ever was," Jack continued, watching the doors threaten to give way as more soldiers pushed against it. "Sending Beckett to the depths." The quirk of his brow brought a smile to her lips that was almost blinding. Angelica didn't know where she belonged in the moment, her eyes flicking between the two of them as they told the beginnings of stories she could never participate in. Things were different. Jack was different.

"Sparrow, this is not the time!" she shouted, drawing their attention back as the doors blew in, red coats pouring into the room with shots blasting and swords raised. Anna launched herself into the fray before she was completely sure of what was happening. Her attacks were vicious, lacking the nearly sweet demeanor Jack had come to know her show in stolen moments.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, dearest, but I am sensing a problem between us!" Jack shouted from across the room, swept up in his own bottle. He dodged a shot, swinging around in time to slam another soldier into a stack of barrels on his left.

"You betrayed me. You seduced me and you used me!" Angelica nearly screamed from her own spot, battling fearlessly and quickly against three soldiers. "I was innocent of the ways of men!"

"You demonstrated a lot of technique for someone I supposedly corrupted," Jack quipped back, watching Scrum dash up the stairs and Anna lean down to take an encouraging drink of rum, straight from the barrel. If she had heard him, she didn't show it, and if she didn't, he was sure she wouldn't care. He caught her subtle movements toward the pulley system, a knowing look in her blue eyes. He copied her movements.

Angelica sent him an affronted look, outrage coloring her tan skin, pausing her movements a moment, long enough for her to notice Jack's moves towards the center of the room.

"I was ready to take my vows! And you- what were you doing in a Spanish Convent anyway?" she shouted, following the other pirates towards the fire pit and the expanse of pulleys.

"Mistook it for a brothel, honest mistake," Jack rebuked, no hint of indignity in his voice. Anna's laugh startled Angelica from her thoughts, pulling her back to the present as gunshots played like thunder over her ears, made her weave through a crowd of soldiers to try and reach Jack and the other woman.

"We are at a disadvantage," she called, tearing herself away from her enraged thoughts, Jack's image always able to hurt her, to bring her to the very edge of her sanity. He had reached Anna, linked arms with her and used their momentum to cut a path through the soldiers, who were still shouting gibberish about orders and the King.

"Speak for yourself! Unlike some who pretend to be, that cannot in fact hold a candle to, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow!" he shouted, stabbing a barrel quickly, watching the flow of rum knock down soldiers and create rivers of amber liquid. Anna followed his motions, Angelica catching on quickly, and soon rum and ale waterfalls were pushing down soldiers by the dozens. Anna paused, her sword poised to strike as she watched the puddles at her feet slowly disappear, leaking between the slates on the floor, the remaining rivers slowly inching towards the flames, promising an inferno.

Angelica had finally reached them through the deafening shots and bloodshed, her movements mirroring the other pirates as they made a circle for them to defend. Rum filtered through the wood planks, drawing Anna's eyes over and over again, distracting her from the imminent threat of death by the Royal Guard, death by the crown. Never a way she would die. Not if she could help it. Heat bathed her face and her side sang with pain as she kept fighting, kept moving because she wasn't ready for death. Not since things were finally looking up and she had time to count stars and read patterns, instead of running from her father, running towards Jack, away from Will, away from the world, back to her brother and her love and the end of the world.

"Jack!" she called, willing him to duck down as she spun, finally locating the right pulley. By the mercy of some god or goddess, Jack ducked, hit the deck in an even movement as she spun, flourishing her blade and cutting through the thick rope with a single slash.

The floor gave way beneath them, three bodies plummeting down into cold water like it was final judgment. Anna's corset weighed her down, made it difficult to swim, but she pushed herself, limbs burning with exertion as she forced herself deeper into water to avoid the sharp catch of a bullet. She felt Jack grab her hand, pull her forward through the icy river, Angelica close behind.

London was fading away with the cool touch of water against her skin and Anna could believe, for only a moment, that Calypso was caressing her face, holding her close like the arms of a mother she didn't know, but wanted. She let herself believe that the burning in her lungs was her body's way of telling her the ocean was calling, that this fresh water was wrong because it should be laced with salt, should carry the strength of tides. Jack's hand kept her tethered, his rough skin brining her back to the present and her clothes were heavy and her mind was racing and she swam like she was born to do it, shedding the pain London laid on her with each stroke.

They washed up on the banks of the River Thames, Angelica first to reach the slimy rock and pull herself out of water's embrace. Anna's head broke water a moment after Jack's and she breathed like air was treasure, like it was beautiful and addictive. Her hands scrambled numbly over rocks, splitting small cuts on her hands, one still held firmly in Jack's, his grip never loosened. Their eyes met, her blue sparkling with something like thanks and sorrow and rebirth, his black a yourwelcome and bright and new and promising. Her hand was still in his, and he made no move to let go.

Her eyes lifted to the sky, her body collapsing against sharp, uneven rocks as she stared at the skies like they were the answer to everything. "Jack, I think we're making a habit of this kind of thing," she breathed raggedly, her voice sounding weak and strong all at once, like it couldn't decide which way to fall.

"One day, we'll just _walk _out of a place we visit," he added, following her gaze and staring at the North Star. For a moment Angelica didn't exist, neither did their pasts, their futures, their half-forgotten memories of pain-laced goodbyes. It was just them and the heavy weight of water-drenched clothing.

Anna was the first to start laughing, to let the tension loose in a moment of hysteria, her body bent in half with the force of her hilarity, her hand still clinging to Jack as if she would die without the tether. He followed close behind, losing himself in the feeling of laughter bubbling in his chest and being set free in a silent, blood-stained night. His fingers were still twined with hers, connecting the space between them as they laughed like they couldn't help it, and maybe they couldn't. Space in their minds was nonexistent, despite the woman only feet away from them, staring over the water with expressionless eyes and the battle they just left behind. Their voices mingled together, laughter overlapping laughter and pain was forgotten.

They worked best when they were together, they kept proving it over and over. They were partners, clasped hands proved that they couldn't fight alone, break the ties of imperialism, or push away from the crown alone. They couldn't be free without the other, not really. Just like they couldn't fall in love alone. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Hey! I'm sorry this is late, I had wanted to get it out sooner, but I've had so much work I had to push it back. Oh the life of a highschooler! Anyway, please please please, review, I need your words of praise. I am like a dog! I'm an Australian Shepard! WOOF!**

**You can't resist the Shepard!**

**-Han**

Anna paused at the sound of a gun cocking above her, her laughter frozen in her throat, the night air drawing freezing fingers across her face, making it numb. She was suddenly aware of the darkness; no one would bother questioning the sudden, sharp sound of a gunshot bouncing off the streets of London, and the night would blanket her body until dawn. Her body would be carted among others who had died of sickness or hanging or otherwise, and most likely be burned on the outskirts of the city. The thought made her shudder, nose wrinkling and eyes shutting against the image.

Jack's hand slipped out of hers, his rough skin dragging along her upper arm as he released her grip. She would be lying if she said she wasn't relishing the lingering warmth he left, trailing fire across her skin, giving it life against the cold.

Her eyes blinked open, the stars coming into focus slowly, wet snarls of her hair falling in her eyes. She sat up slowly, bracing her hands on slimy rocks that threatened to shift, slide, slam her violently into more of them, jagged edges and unforgiving corners. She felt slow, muddling through the motions under the pendulum of death, swinging back and forth and daring her to move. She looked up; Angelica held the gun, her expression a mixture of deadly steel and boredom. Like they weren't worth her time.

"Wet powder," Jack and Anna spoke as one, eyes narrowed and filled with contempt, backs straight and refusing to back down. The space that separated them meant nothing, Angelica could see that much. They didn't even need to look at each other. Their minds were together, back before political intrigue ruled all of their lives, and a flash of green lit the horizon. They were back on the deck of the Pearl, four pirates in a standoff, arguing the fate of piracy as they knew it, the fate of William's father, and of Elizabeth's loyalties. Back when Anna had a brother and Jack was her best friend.

Angelica returned the gun to a sash at her side, disappointment tinged with embarrassment at being caught in a lie. Anna couldn't hold back a smirk; it felt natural on her lips, almost like a fall back, eager to welcome her home. Jack's strained chuckle broke the silence, rippling off the water they had dragged their bodies out of, and it sounded like it was trying to call her back, let her slip under. Choke her with the alluring call of her lover.

"Jack," Angelica snapped, watching with annoyance as Jack pressed his lips together dramatically, trying to suppress his rough and tumbled chuckle. Anna cut her eyes to him, trying to hide her mirth for the sake of the situation, dark and dull and possibly deadly. "The Fountain, what do you know about it?" Angelica asked, calling them back to the present, to the shadowy reality they resided in, where ashes took the place of clouds and cobblestone streets were their waves, people their tides. Jack and Anna hated it.

"You don't happen to be in possession of two Silver Chalices, circa Ponce de Leon?" Jack asked nonchalantly as he sat up, draining water from his boot, catching the spare coins that spilled from it deftly. He flipped on to Anna, she caught it and spun it in her fingers, watching it shine dimly with distant fascination, flicking it up in the air and catching it again.

"No," Angelica answered, watching Anna with contempt, wondering what she was thinking and considering her a child all at once. Anna flipped the coin again, catching it, and taking a closer look, trying to read the foreign inscription in the low light. She smiled.

It was a crudely crafted gold coin from South America, salvaged from an ancient Incan civilization by Conquistadors in the Spanish crusade through the Americas. When the regiment lost their way in the dense Amazon and never came out, the indigenous took anything they fancied. The shaman of the village they were taken to told them this in his broken English, and Jack had seen the enraptured look in Anna's eyes.

Sometimes it still shocked her, to learn that he cared.

"Ha, thought not," Jack said brightly, hoping the conversation was over, praying he wouldn't be caught up in this. Because his ego would choke him out, leave his mission skewed and broken, and he would fall to the allure of the Fountain. He couldn't trust himself to remember the price.

"Why?" Angelica asked, refusing to let the topic die, to let it sink back into the water where it came from.

"You are of the Ritual?" Anna asked, speaking for the first time in what felt like forever, her voice sounding unused and rough. Almost dangerous. It sent a chill down Jack's spine, and his black eyes found her form, and his heart warmed just the slightest when he realized that she hadn't looked up from the coin.

"Yes, I am," Angelica answered with a smile, one that seemed genuine to Jack, predatory but real in a way the horizon was, constant in their minds and reaching out and away all at once. He couldn't read her, the Spanish beauty was an enigma of sexuality and danger he didn't want to touch. He didn't want to lose a part of himself by falling into her, by letting himself taste skin and grip hair and kiss lips, by letting himself be taken by ecstasy. Jack wondered if it was himself or Anna he was concerned with losing, but he doubted it mattered. The definition was the same to him, and he wasn't even sorry. Content was laying it lightly; he was free and he wasn't alone. He was ecstatic.

"Oh, well, that settles things," Jack said brightly, rubbing his hands together excitedly. Anna nodded along, slipping the coin into her breast pocket with nimble fingers, and prepared to stand.

A sharp sting in her neck had her reeling, the stars blending together into a bright comet, shining above her head like a message written by the gods. Her head was going to hit the rocks, and crack, rebound against the edges, probably bleed. Instead she landed in the cushion of Jack's lap, and she tried to wonder aloud how she got there. It came out as a stuttering of syllables tripping over each other, trying to form audible words. His eyes were worried, and she struggled to understand why, her eyelids growing heavy, limbs nonresponsive.

"Love?" he asked, plucking a dart from her neck, rolling it between his fingers and the sting seemed to stay behind too long, everything moved too slowly. Darkness was creeping in, settling over her eyes. Her body went limp; Jack's following only a moment behind, the dart in his own neck untouched. Sometimes, Anna was surprised by the little things Jack did for her, but he knew he'd never change them. Even as his body slumped painfully to the rocks below him, Anna's upper body cradled in his lap, he would be okay.

Xx

The Tower of London was as imposing as it was dangerous, a constant reminder to the people on the streets that the law was watching them, could kill them. Dirt caked the cobblestones, a mixture of grime and blood and ashes, a darkness that consumed frantic screams and pleas for help and an eternal agony of lives snuffed out or caged in.

Gibbs was being dragged, not one of his more favorable pastimes, but not something he was unaccustomed to. His arms hurt with the iron grip of the guards, and he wondered if they knew he could walk. Small glowing fires cast shadows on the walls, fallen angels keeping watch over the damned, ashen wings spread wide in welcoming.

A wooden platform rose in his vision, judgment at its finest hanging above him, wishing to hang him, ready to finally end him. Ominous was an understatement, and fear was coursing through his veins faster than the tides, taking hold in his body and making him feel more of a coward than he did when he left the Navy and failed at piracy and washed up in Tortuga.

"There's been a mistake! It's a life sentence, not death. Life!" he shouted to his stoic guards, sending silent prayers to the savior he had denied. But, that God may hold no good will to him. He should pray to rum instead. _Dear Lord and Savior, Amber liquid which quells my tumultuous thoughts, do deliver me from evil and from these bulky, blundering arms of the Crown. And may I come across you soon. As soon as possible. Now-now would be fantastic._

That sounded prayer-like, didn't it?

He nearly choked when a man walked from the shadows, illuminated by yellow firelight, slipping from darkness like demons and devils and monsters from his dreams. This was not the answer to his prayer. "Barbossa?" he asked, gruff voice making it sound harsh, confused, and bitter all at once. But what could he say, he was a complicated man.

"Thank you, gentlemen," Barbossa addressed the soldiers at Gibbs' side as they backed away. Rope was thrown at him, and Gibbs caught it with a sadness in his soul that crushed any element of power he might pretend he had. "I trust you can tie a noose."

"It's a hard thing. Forcing a man to twist his own hanging rope," Gibbs said darkly, throwing it back with fervor in his eyes reflected in the small fire to his right.

"You must lie in your bed the way you made it," Barbossa answered blankly, tossing it back. Gibbs wondered if all people ended up like this, back in the position they were fighting, running from, pretended didn't exist. They both had, on opposite sides.

"What's happened to you?" Gibbs asked, shock coloring his voice and confusion sinking into his limbs and he hated seeing this. It was like learning about the world was wrong. Ignorance should always be bliss and moving through the world without knowing anything was safer.

"Where be Jack Sparrow and his lovely dove?" Barbossa asked instead of answering, bringing Gibbs back.

"Anna," Gibbs corrected sharply, his voice stronger than it was a moment ago, burning with the want to do right by the girl who'd done so much for others. And she was still forgotten, fading to the background, gone, forgotten. Who would write stories about her, who would speak in hushed tones and be afraid of her. For her.

"Aye," Barbossa agreed indifferently, shrugging it off. "But where are they?"

"They escaped?" Gibbs asked, focusing for a moment and wishing that he could have seen it, sure it was grand, the kind of flourish Jack could be proud of, that Anna would go along with.

"I'm on a tight schedule, Gibbs. The HMS Providence sets sail at first light, and if you do not care hanging here dead with a mouth full of flies…speak now," Barbossa requested darkly, glittering ego still shining through caked-on powder and a uniform. Gibbs could see the sharp edge of steel, the freedom of the winds hiding just beneath the skin, below the powdered wig.

His words sunk in slowly, and Gibbs was rushing ahead, needing little imagination to feel the rope around his neck, biting into his skin like Leviathans from Purgatory, no love, no mercy. Only Death. He wasn't ready for that yet, and he could only hope that Jack and Anna understood that. Groves, a soldier that had walked in with Barbossa that Gibbs distantly recalled from Beckett's army, looped the rope over the wooden frame. The begging of his end.

"Take me with you. Any point of the compass-" he spoke rapidly, weather face crumpled in begging, something he thought no man should be above. Not when his life was on the line and there was only air between him and the possibility of death. He had nothing to work with but his words, and he sent a quick prayer to his rum that he'd picked something up from Jack.

"Take you _where_, Gibbs? The Fountain?" Barbossa asked, catching Gibbs in the almost imperceptible flash over his eyes. He'd come to that conclusion, sure that neither pirate would allow royalty to gain immortality. The thought would strike fear into Anna and Jack would want to eradicate it. "Aye? Is that where Jack be headed? Have you anything you can offer me, Gibbs?" The reformed pirate turned imploring, begging, and Gibbs wondered how much was riding on this, how much he'd invested. "_Anything_ at all?"

The pirate hardened, dirty hands reaching for his breast pocket, his eyes a mask of firelight and shadows, dancing within his blue-green eyes. His fingers wrapped around the map, smeared with gunpowder and dried blood and dirt, taking a firm grip on it like it would disappear. The harsh glow of the fire illuminated the unrolled circular map as Gibbs unfolded it almost reluctantly.

"Hand it over," Barbossa said softly, a kind of primal lust in his voice that harkened back to every moment he spent consumed by his greed, skeletal in moonlight and food was ash and nothing meant anything. He was supposed to be away from that, now. He was supposed to be better.

Gibbs watched the heavy step forward, wooden leg clinking on the cobblestone and rebounding off the stone walls of the Tower of London, the prison seemed even more caging to Gibbs, his options running out. Fire caught his vision, what he imagined Hell to be like, writhing flames reaching out, trying to grab you, pull you under, play with your skin and your bones until you're screaming in agony and begging for release that would never come. He threw the map in, watched it blacken on the edges, curl delicately inward, the smell of burning paper consuming his senses.

Barbossa pushed him back roughly, pain flaring in his shoulder as Gibbs stumbled, feeling the heat from the privateer's burning gaze, but Gibbs' eyes were on the map, watching La Florida be covered in ash and licked away by flames. Mermaids disappeared and beautiful tales and mysteries and fear blackening and crumbling to nothing.

"_You fool!_" Barbossa hissed, glaring between the scum before him and the map burning beautifully and agonizingly and grotesquely. Every moment spent waiting was another the Spanish moved on, another the English fell behind, and another Blackbeard made his way forward, made his way towards eternal life. Barbossa would sooner die than see that day.

"I've just enough time to study those infernal circles, every route, every destination; all safe," Gibbs said roughly, pushing himself forward and drawing himself up, and conjuring up the piracy in his veins, making him dangerous. "_In here." _He pointed at his head, grimy finger against the skin of his temple. He could feel the pulse there, beating too fast with nerves he would never admit were collecting and boiling and threatening to break him.

Barbossa could say no, could insist on his death and this would have been the last sunset he'd ever see, the last night, the last everything, and he savored the inhalations of air filling his lungs. The way his boots felt on the uneven ground, the way his clothes stuck to his skin with sweat and dirt and maybe even blood. The way his mind raced along every route, every possible place the map lead to, where mermaids strung up white caps and lured men to death with songs and rosy lips.

Barbossa considered him as if he were a specimen, dirt under his shoes, muck in the trenches, a dead rat on the street. He nodded to himself, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to alleviate the constant pain, ache, jarring pins and needles that stemmed from his thigh. His severed leg was always on his mind, never gone, even for an instant. Even when he lie in a bed or a cot or a hammock, and tried to slip away from the consciousness of the moment, and his body would sing with a pain he couldn't even define and he would remember. He would never be whole again.

He would make the man pay, would make Blackbeard know his pain, to know every second, of every minute, of every day. Every numb moment when he tried to bend his knee and nothing happen, wiggle his toes and get no response, take a step and nearly fall. Tumble to the ground. Not be able to get up.

His eyes were steel on the pirate before him, one he considered both enemy and friend and different times in his life. Times he wanted to return to. Times he missed. He grinned, yellow teeth glinting in the night.

"Welcome back to His Majesty's Navy, Master Gibbs!" Barbossa congratulated with a cackle, walking past the man as best he could, his bad leg causing shooting pains up and down his spine like some kind of music. Gibbs exhaled, relief rolling off of his body, and his eyes found the burning map, watching White-Capped Bay disappearing in black smoke.

In the courtyard of the Tower of London, dawn was rising, pale light flooding empty cobblestone and a wooden platform. The dirt and grime and blood stains in the stone were illuminated, protection of the night slipping off of it as the truth rose with the sun. Bars were rusty and cells were sickly looking, and the warm glow of firelight could no longer disguise it. Winged guardians of Hell retreated for the day, ashen shadows slinking back into the cracks in the walls. The sky was blue, the air peaceful, and from the platform, an empty noose swung in a slight breeze.


	11. Chapter 11

**Hey, a bit disappointed with the lack of reviews (okay a lot but I'm trying not to complain) so I beg you guys to please review. They make my day every time I see one, really. Thank you to the two of you who did comment, it means a lot that you've stuck with me this long. I went ahead and decided that there WILL be another story after this, but it'll be slower coming. I may through in a one shot about the Amazon to tie you guys over. Thank you to everyone, please please please review.**

**-Han**

Anna felt her body drifting, swinging contently under the warm glare of early-morning sun against her skin. She shifted, reaching out without opening her eyes intent on pulling herself to Jack's warmth, one of the only ways she could sleep now. She found nothing but the heavy air, rough cloth against her body most likely a hammock. She didn't want to open her eyes and find her thoughts to be true, but she couldn't stop the slow blinking-open of her blue eyes.

The Crew's quarters she was in were poorly cleaned, brown muck ingrained into the wood and the overwhelming stench of rum-soaked sailors blanketing everything. She rolled from the hammock carefully, her boots impacting the floor with a resounding thump. She winced, no one else was awake, and the sun had just begun to peak over the horizon, like it had a secret to tell the waves. Her gaze travelled the expanse of sleeping crewmen carefully, stopping suddenly when her eyes caught Jack, relief rolling from her shoulders. She had no idea where she was, but at least she wasn't alone.

She reached forward, her fingertips hovering over his tan cheek, her touch only a whisper against his face, her body close to him, about to wake him up. And then they could figure out where they were and they get out. It was simple. Sitting above the stink of alcohol drenched sailors, was the clean scent of the ocean breeze, the ocean calling her home. Her eyes were rapt on the man before her, eyes closed in sleepy content, half smile adorned on his sensually curved lips. He looked like a fallen angel.

She doubted she deserved him.

The snores of the crewmen were the only sound between them, and Anna reveled in the near silence, straining to hear the sound of waves lapping against the side of the ship. She breathed, feeling rested for the first time in days, and brushed her fingertips along his skin, like she was memorizing him.

"_Show a leg, sailors!" _The ear-shattering shout from the stairs had her jumping back, removing her hand like it was burned in time with Jack rolling violently from his hammock. His upper body slammed into hers, his legs tangling within the rough cloth of his swinging cot, sending them both crashing to the floor.

"Aye sir!" Jack shouted on his way down, blinking a moment later as his charcoal eyes met her blinding blue; they were blown wide with confusion and anxiety. He adopted a smirk only a moment later, shifting until his hands braced his body on either side of her head, every other contour of his body against hers. "Well hello there," he rumbled, the sound nearly a growl in his chest that left her reeling.

"Jack," she whispered, arching her back slightly in an attempt to get closer, always closer. Her thoughts were hazy, hard to reach, hard to hold onto. "Where-where are we?" she asked breathlessly, a blush coloring her cheeks at her own stumbling voice.

His brow crumpled in confusion, the flood of warmth through his body quelling for a moment long enough to think. He nodded to himself, standing gracefully and offering her an arm. "Shall we venture out into this grand vessel?" he asked brightly, as if he wasn't just lying on top of her, making sinful thoughts of fallen angels and throws of passion and Hell Fire that scorches but doesn't bring pain.

"I doubt we'll be accepted as warmly as you think we'll be," Anna answered after a beat of pause, where she regained her bearings and watched masses of half-awake half-hung over crewmen trudge up the stairs and into the open air.

"What are you talkin' about? Love, we'll be treated like _kings!"_

Xx

Mops were shoved at both of them, and the short man from the _Captain's Daughter_ led them across a red and black deck with the air of a man who was finally in his element. Anna's eyes traced the deck with mild interest, wondering if the red stains were from the constant streaming blood flowing from the victims of whatever ship they were on. It didn't seem like they were anywhere merciful.

"Kings, huh?" she asked with a bitter edge to the tone of her voice as she was shoved roughly by a passing man, a harsh glare in his eyes. Jack sent her a sympathetic glance and turned back to the man leading them.

"There's been a horrible mistake," he started, hoping to talk his way out of whatever hard labor he had planned for the two of them. He didn't like the looks Anna was getting, the mad glint of women-starved men tracing across the gentle curve of her hips and easy steps. She was accustomed to the swell of the ocean, the tipping and swaying of the deck, and it was obvious. Jack was sure men would appreciate it.

"Keep movin'," the man commanded, urging them onwards with no sympathy. Anna gripped her mop tighter and resolved to an unhappy long day. At least she was back on the water, the ocean her home, welcoming her back. In her mind, that meant she was safe.

"We're not supposed to be here," Jack insisted, stumbling over a bucket beneath his feel, watching the soapy water spill over the maroon deck, and he wondered why it looked like bloodstains adorned the deck, forever etched into the wood, forever imprinted.

"Many a man's woken up at sea, no idea what, when, wherefore or why, no memory of the night afore whence he drank away all his bonus money," Scrum said with a rough laugh, leading them through the glare of the sun and the smell of the sea.

"No no no," Anna weighed in, her eyes harder than they had been since the fight the night before when Angelica was bearing down on her and the quick-fire of bloodlust had taken hold. "He is Captain Jack Sparrow, the one and only!"

"And _you_ my short fellow, are in the presence of Annabelle Windsor!" Jack picked up instantly, staring down at the smaller man almost pompously, like he'd won something. Scrum paused in his tracks, casting his mind back to the night before and the knife to his throat and remembered the two, knew they were real. But he was under orders from a man who could kill him without lifting a finger. So he wouldn't speak.

"Scrum. And the pleasure's all mine. Now keep moving," he insisted, casting his eyes wearily about him, as if expecting his Master to be there, be ready to kill him, be ready to end his life on deck in the midmorning light.

She scrubbed the deck with more gusto than was strictly necessary, her back hurt, her fingers pruned, but she kept scrubbing. The foul looks men were sending her were enough to make her push her body further than she needed to, in a vain attempt to prove herself. Jack watched her with the crumpled eyes of a concerned man, who was afraid to speak and upset the frazzled nerves of the woman beside him.

Soapy water built up around her brush, scrubbing down into the wood and trying to erase the eternal red stains. It didn't look any cleaner to her eye, but Anna kept going. Off to the left of them, the sound of hang-over shattering hammers brought both pirates' eyes up and over, staring at men creating a glass coffin. Both men working on it had greyish skin, dead looking and water logged, empty and vacant eyes that would haunt Anna's dreams for years to come. Stitches lined their skin, recreating them like rag dolls, like they had to be put back together in scattered pieces.

Unconsciously, Jack and Anna moved together, shuffling with their brushes until they were close enough to Scrum to voice their concerns. "Why is there a glass coffin?" they whispered together, sending glances at the other as if to be sure they had both spoken at once. It was almost unnatural when they didn't.

"Do I look like the man in charge?" Scrum asked sarcastically, rolling his eyes and scrubbing harder into the deck. Anna copied his actions, breathing in the soft smell of the sea drifting in and around the ship.

"Where are we?" Jack asked a moment later, seeming to drop the subject of a crystalline coffin. Scrum frowned, as though ashamed he had forgotten his manners and bowed slightly.

"'Scuse me, Captain Sparrow, sir, and Miss Princess Anna, ma'am. I be right honored to welcome you aboard our world-renowned vessel of infamy - Queen Anne's Revenge," he said with a sweeping motion of his hand a proud glint in his eyes.

Anna swallowed, fear curling in her stomach like a maelstrom, taking hold in her veins and singing every fiber of her being. She knew the stories, had told them herself aboard her first journey on the Black Pearl, when she thought no one but Cotton was listening to her and a storm was rising with the end of the day and afterwards she would tell her own story, without anyone knowing.

"Blackbeard," she whispered, dread clear in her voice and she wasn't looking for this pirate. She'd only come to London to free Gibbs and find her mother, not be taken aboard the most notorious ship (aside from the Pearl) by one of the most vicious pirates known to man.

The red and black ship cut through the waves with ease, the eerie beauty of its majesty was not unlike the Black Pearl when it was wrapped up in an Aztec curse, gold lining their despair and blanketing the ship in fog and crumbling wood and shredded sails. The two out-of-place pirates scrubbing the deck tried to keep their rolling emotions in check, the ability to run non-existent and the fear within them growing. But pirates weren't supposed to feel fear.

The Quartermaster dumped more water in their path, his movements halting and slow like a marionette on strings, unaccustomed to movement. Anna thought the strings must be invisible, attached to Blackbeard somehow, controlling the stitched up puppet-man from the darkness of his cabin.

"He's a curious one," Jack commented calmly, as if the man's dead eyes and ashen circles around them against his pale skin didn't send shivers rolling down his spine. He wasn't afraid.

"He's been zombified," Scrum said lowly, sneaking side glances at the man in an attempt to scrutinize without the possibility of the whip cracking down on his back.

"Eh?" Jack and Anna asked together, confusion coloring the sound and their faces and Anna recalled the cursed crew of the Black Pearl, the way their bones glinted in the blue light of the moon. She wondered if they were like that. The dead blue rolling eyes were worse than any skeletal man she'd ever seen. They were filmed over, white where they shouldn't be, like it'd been dead for far too long.

"Zombiefied. Blackbeard's doing. All the officers are the same. Makes 'em more compliant," Scrum explained flatly, wishing to add expression to his words but knowing he couldn't. Gunner, one of the meanest officers was stalking between the men, his whip poised and ready. Before he could speak again, it cracked down on an unsuspecting man, the reverberating cry striking fear into every other crewmember.

"And perpetually ill-tempered," Jack commented dryly as Anna nodded along. Her shoulder bumped against his, and he fixed her with a long look, one wrapped with every word he couldn't say, every 'it'll be okay' and 'I'm here' and 'don't worry' that could never leave his lips. She understood, and her answering smile was enough for him to know she was saying it all back.

Thirty minutes later they were hauling on a rope with Scrum and her hands burned, but she could rest happy that she'd already built up calluses within the smithy. All those years with Will at her side through burns and blisters and healing through the scars came rushing back and she missed her brother more than air sometimes. The memories came randomly, but it seemed like Jack always knew on instinct.

His rough hand glided over hers, pulling her back from the past and into the present where her body was straining and the wind was whipping at her hair and the stench of the crew was almost overpowering the scent of the ocean she loved.

"Five days underway, at least," Jack commented dryly, taking a long breath in. The very idea that they had slept that long was ludicrous, and enjoyable. No wonder Anna felt so rested.

"You can tell that by the smell of the sea?" Scrum asked with interest.

"The smell of the crew," Anna answered for him as Jack tied off the rope and let his eyes travel up the mast and settle on a strong looking young man tied there like he was spread out on the cross. Like he was the savior Jack didn't really believe in.

"Oi. What did that poor sod do? How can I make sure to not?" Jack asked, interest masking his concern for the man who stared resolutely into the horizon as if it held the absolute answer for him, deliverance.

"Him? Churchly fellow. Always going on about the Lord Almighty," Scrum commented with little care, tossing the words as if they were meaningless. Anna's eyes followed Jack's and her head tipped in concentration, trying to make out his face from his height.

"Bible-thumper on this ship?" Anna asked in confusion, taking a quick sip of broth from the cook as he passed by, her stomach rumbling at just the thought of a full meal she would enjoy later that day.

"A missionary's the story. What I heard, was he got captured in a raid. 'For that he was in London, told the Captain he knew of the life o' piracy, but he'd been saved. Found the light, as it were. Rest of the ship got killed - but not him. First Mate wouldn't let it happen, on account of his premier standing with the Lord an' ability to retreat from the life o' ungodly killin' an' thievery," Scrum said with a stern nod, as if the words were divine law. Anna leaned forward with interest wondering why any person would _want_ to leave piracy. But in the back of her mind she remembered the raid in London, the stench of fear swimming in the streets, people screaming for second chances. Maybe she could understand. "First Mate sticking her neck out for some prisoner? That you don't see," he intoned, pointing a finger at the two of them.

"Her? Our First Mate is a her?" Jack asked, picking up on the smallest slip while Anna was still stuck in the past of blood on cobblestones and a musket in her hands.

"_Back to work!" _the Quartermaster shouted, causing a new flurry of movement on deck, leaving time for Scrum to scurry away like the rat he was. Anan stiffened beside Jack, her eyes rapt on the helm as a woman stepped out behind the flapping black flag of Blackbeard. Angelica raised her eyes to the sea beyond them, watching the deck below her with contempt and assured confidence.

"Steady as she goes," the Spanish woman shouted, her rough voice carrying over the men. Anna nearly growled, anger and betrayal pulsing through her body and Jack could practically taste the tension between them.

"That distasteful, arrogant, _harlot_!" she swore, reaching down for the sword in her belt on instinct. Jack grabbed her wrist quickly, a warning glance in his dark eyes that communicated everything he couldn't say. But she still needed to hear it.

"We'll be okay. It'll be fine," Jack said softly, so softly no one else could hear him. "No Spanish strumpet is going to cause _our _demise. You wait, love, we'll be out of this pinch in no time." For some reason, Anna didn't quite believe him, but she relished the sound of his voice and the assurance in his words anyway.

The wind blew her hair around her shoulders, a brown cascading tangle of brown locks around her eyes that Jack traced over and over again, ever changing like the waves. Her eyes were wide with trust and suppressed violence. She was quick fire, wild, something insanely dangerous in the way she moved and caught and burst into flames. And he was addicted.

He couldn't stop himself from was saying words that pirates shouldn't say, from letting his softer side show every time she fixed him with that concerned glance of perfect blue eyes. Perfect was not a word he used to describe many things, aside from the ocean and the Pearl, nothing was perfect. Except for her eyes, and her voice, and her beautiful soft skin and her ability to make him crumble.

He would say he was changing, would say he was twisting and becoming something different from what he was. But he wasn't, not really. He was finding home. And even though the seas that surrounded him where not being slice open by his own ship, and he didn't stand at the helm with a straight back and proud eyes, and the greatest expression of his less-than-perfect past was hovering over him with hawk-like eyes, he would be okay. As long as she was.

He slapped a hand on her back, because she could take it, and watched the hesitant look in her eyes melt into a grin. This was just another adventure, and they were _so _good at those. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Hey guys! Thank you so much for the response last chapter, keep it up? Your reviews are honestly the only reason I keep writing. Otherwise I would've gotten bored and quit by now. Anyway, Thanks you guys, really. This is shorter than most, but I'm pretty happy with it. Bear with me, and the next will be longer. Enjoy!**

**-Han**

Anna crept down the stairs with the air of a woman who knew the plot was about to thicken, the tides were about to change. Her fingertips pressed against the rough wood of the banister, sunlight wafted through the hatch and illuminating dusty hammocks and boxes of food in the corners. Jack was just behind her, his steps only whispers against the lull of the sea against the ship. He grabbed a hook from a wall mount with slippery fingers, grasping it as if the hook could substitute for his hand, calluses and rings and all.

She slipped behind a support beam, taking a moment to breathe and remember the intention: get off the ship. The _Queen Ann's Revenge _was infamous, dangerous, and bloody. Neither pirate wanted to stay there, be imprisoned for the whims of another. Freedom was in their veins and they weren't going to give it up now.

"Love?" Jack asked, pressing his body against hers in an attempt to make themselves smaller, undetectable to the uncaring eyes of crewmen. She grinned, looking up at him and feeling the warm lines of his body against her. "With me?"

"Always," she whispered conspiringly, as if everything were a game. Life was easier that way, and she was tired of being sad. Tired of being so serious. "That Angelica of yours certainly knows what she's doin'."

"She is merely an inadequate copy of myself in female form," Jack countered with a shake of his head. "Lord only knows how she managed to shanghai the two of us." Anna leaned forward slightly, as if to impart a desperately important piece of information.

"I believe it was poisonous darts, Birdie," She said slowly, as if waiting for him to catch up. He rolled his eyes with a small smile, reaching up with his free hand to ruffle her hair.

"Darling, life is never boring with you," he whispered almost affectionately. She shrugged, her fingers slipping to her sword at the sound of footsteps overhead. She nodded to him, her blue eyes clouding over into stormy waters with the onset of a mission. Warmth and fondness left their bodies sharply, a withdrawal that made her breathing catch. Their stolen moment was over.

The clip of heeled boots on the steps were deafening, consuming her mind as they slowly made their way to the lower deck. Angelica breezed through the hammocks with authority she shouldn't possess. When she paused by their hiding place, Jack rolled, his body shifting elegantly until it pinned the Spanish beauty to the wood, the hook in his hand raised and pointed at her eye. Anna slipped from her position a moment later, standing just behind Jack to the right, flicking her eyes to the steps and back, keeping them safe.

"You...are a ruthless, soulless, crossgrained cur," Jack hissed, his voice a rough whisper in the gentle sway of wind and soft water. It was a greeting Angelica had been expecting, but the venom behind his voice was almost jarring, a bite that wouldn't heal, not completely.

"I told you I had a ship," She rebuked, eyeing the hook warily as her breathing picked up, sounded strained against the bonds of her vest, laced too tightly around her waist.

"No," Anna interjected with a roll of her eyes. "_Blackbeard _has a ship, upon which we are now imprisoned." Her gaze landed on Angelica's and the image of the sea during a storm rose to the Spaniard's mind.

"We can do this, Jack," she whispered deliberately dismissing Anna. "The Fountain of Youth. Like you always wanted," she taunted, leaning forward as far as she could without impaling herself on the hook still hanging in her vision.

Anna almost spoke up, almost let her voice float through the air again and provide some sort of an answer, for the both of them. But she didn't. She couldn't speak for Jack and she knew it. She couldn't control his decisions, and for all she knew, immortality by way of golden chalice may still be in the cards.

"Blackbeard. Edward Teach. The pirate all pirates fear. Resurrector of the dead in his spare time," Jack listed darkly, taking away the hook in favor of using it to gesture with, accenting his words with his movements in a way Anna could define as art.

"He will listen to me," Angelica pressed, pushing her body closer to his. Anna looked away, trying to pretend that her heart didn't clench when her lips hovered over his. He leaned away, though she didn't see it.

"He listens to no one," Jack groaned back, as if Angelica was stupid, was lost in her own delusions.

"Maybe to his own daughter?" Angelica tried, shifting again until her fingers skimmed his forearms, tracing skin Anna knew by heart. Anna's heart clenched in an anger she had begun to relate to Davy Jones and Lord Beckett and the Kraken and her father.

"Daughter, as in beget by?" Jack questioned, ignorant to the battle raging in Anna's chest as the spark of possessive wanting took hold in her veins, burning, singing, searing in a way she didn't understand and didn't like.

"Long-lost. Recently found. Who loves her dear papá with all her soul," Angelica whispered, leaning forward just enough to give the impression of touch, of a whisper of his cheek. Not quite but real enough to make the world stop for a moment. When Jack jerked away, relief rolled off of Anna, mixed with her growing dislike of the Spanish tart.

"He bought that?" Anna asked sarcastically, an eyebrow raised. Angelica glared at her over Jack's shoulder, the man's body lined with a tension Anna could read. Things weren't going according to plan, they would be stuck here, with nowhere to go and no one to rely on but each other.

"I sold that," Angelica sneered.

Anna shifted, pulling Jack and by succession, Angelica swiftly into a shadowed corner as the Quartermaster stalked by, his steps halting and uneven. Her quick eyes watched him go, forcing her breathing to fall silent and slow. Her grip on Jack's wrist was bruising, but he didn't seem to mind. The touch kept her grounded, kept her in the moment. The zombie slunk out of earshot and they turned as one to face Angelica.

"Then it's the Fountain of Youth for him or him and you, not you and me," he paused, pushing her further into the wall. "And certainly not for you and me and Annie."

"No, Jack, that's the best part. He will be dead," Angelica whispered, choosing not to linger on his last words, not bothering to cast a glance at the small woman with a steel in her blue eyes.

"Ah. You'll be handling that part yourself, then," Jack guessed sarcastically, rolling his eyes and reaching for the his sword, the comforting weight reassuring him.

"There is a prophecy. Maybe you don't believe in the supernatural," Angelica started, looking earnestly at the both of them, as if Anna could convince Jack to change his mind. The two pirates shook their heads as one.

"No, no, no, we've seen a thing or two," they answered together, as if the words were practiced. Angelica paused, watching the way their lips moved in syncopated motions, as if they were two halves of a whole, a complete set of wings.

"The Quartermaster. The man with no eyes. He is known as eleri ipin, witness of fate. He sees things before they happen. He's never wrong," Angelica whispered fervently, gripping Jack's arm like it was her tether to reality.

"I can do that too, if you don't count women, weather, and other things that are hard to predict," Jack supplied helpfully. Anna chuckled, low and rough and tumbled up in the swarm of energy around them. He cracked a grin in response, the edges of his lips curling up at the sound of her laughter.

"The prophecy is this: _Blackbeard will meet his death, within a fortnight, at the hands of a one-legged man, with his greatest enemy watching him fall_." Things like that sent shivers down Anna's spine, and this one did not disappoint. Prophecies were terrible things, impossible to reverse but people like to pretend that they can, like to rush and scream and kick and fight Destiny's pull. Anna had learned to go with the tides, and hope the words could be interpreted differently. "That is why he needs the Fountain, Jack," Angelica whispered, slipping from his arms and back upstairs with easy movements.

The sunlight filtered through the cracks in the upper deck, touching Jack and Anna's skin in soft lines of heaven, darkness surrounded the rest of them. Jack turned to her slowly, his lips pulled into a soft smirk.

"Interesting," he mused, leaning against the wall of the ship with his arms crossed over his chest. Anna nodded, carding a hand through her hair and feeling the gentle sway of the waves against the ship.

"Very interesting." She paused, eyes flitting from Jack to the stairs, wondering when they would have to give up their peace. "We can't stay here, though I'm sure the family drama will be amusing."

"What's a poor pair of pirates to do," Jack wondered aloud, his eyes darkening as she moved towards him, resting her body against the wall next to him, their arms brushing.

"S'far as I can see, we have two options," Anna said logically. "Jumping ship or…"

"Mutiny," Jack finished for her, the spark in his eyes seemed to swallow him. She nudged him, leaning her head on his shoulder for a moment.

"No one will think any less of you," she whispered, and she was sure he was picturing a lonely desert island and the Black Pearl shrinking into the horizon, passing over without its Captain. The deepest circles of hell are reserved for betrayers and mutineers, as Jack had told her once.

"I will," Jack muttered after a long moment of silence, nothingness dragging on and on until it wrapped around them and suffocated. She moved, shifted until she met his black eyes, they seemed desperate and broken.

"I can't say anything to change your mind, can I?" she asked, raising a hand to brush along his cheek. He turned away from her, his eyes on the ground. She stepped back, a weak smile on her lips and the soft knowledge that Jack needed to be alone. Becoming what you hated was never easy. She didn't want to go down that road either.

Anna pushed herself from the wall and headed towards the stairs, her steps slow and even, as if praying he would call her back, pull her in, keep her next to him and whisper into her hair. But he needed to be alone, she could tell that much.

The concept of mutiny was too great, too imposing and once upon a time Jack had promised himself he'd never sink that low. Being rejected, jilted, turned away from your home and your mission, it was crushing and terrible and he didn't want anyone to have to face that.

"Love?" he called before she could slip away completely. She paused and looked back, her eyes hopeful despite herself, wishing for something she shouldn't want. The want for affection was going to destroy her, when piracy meant distance but she wanted close. She wanted impossible close.

Jack was her drug and she was addicted and it was so easy to lose herself in the feel of his skin and the taste of his lips.

"I'll be up soon," he whispered, his eyes turning soft and hesitant, as if he'd meant to say something else. She nodded, sending him an encouraging smile that he could only describe as soothing, like the feeling of the waves on your skin.

She mounted the stairs and brought herself into the breeze, breathing in the scent of the ocean like it was the only thing keeping her alive. She braced her arms against the railing, watching the waves and the sunlight playing on them like they were a secret message for her to read. They were a language she couldn't decode, the angels speaking to her. The gold light the voices of the warriors of God, watching over the world with hawkish eyes and booming voices that people interpreted as light and thunder. The ocean kept her grounded, she thought distantly, but her thoughts were currents she could get swept up in too easily. She could get pulled under.

Anna tried to keep herself in the moment, where the sea was inviting and the sun was hot and the breeze was cool and life wasn't so bad. But she wondered, sometimes, in moments where she couldn't put Jack back together again, if he really needed her. She wondered if she was just tacked onto the end of his thoughts, barely remembered.

She wondered if love was always given equally.

Surprisingly, she thought she would be okay, even if it wasn't. Even if love wasn't balanced and she trailed after him. Anna would follow him to the edges of the earth, beyond it, she'd proven her feelings. She'd ended in the same boat, with the crushing assurance that Jack cared for her but couldn't show it, that he wanted her with him but occasionally had to remind himself of her existence and her pain. She wondered if he knew what love was.

And she didn't care.

She had taught Will a long time ago, when chasing Elizabeth seemed impossible and the days were simple, that love meant being willing to care even when the other didn't. Even when they didn't even notice you.

The movement on deck did not disturb her as she gazed out at the horizon and imagined touching it, brushing her fingers across the edge of the earth and finding solace, comfort. She sighed, and the action was long suffering and contented all at once.

She had come to terms with Jack, the idea of love with him was still foreign and unreal, she was learning as she went. It was the only way she could live. Trying to plan it out and map it and understand it was no way to continue. Jack was too unpredictable to read.

But she would be there for him, whenever he decided he was ready, whenever he wanted her.

She absently drew her fingers across the black and red railing and wondered if Jack would ever see what he did to her. Bent her in half, twisted her heart in his hands, pulled her across changing tides and hung her out to dry. And she was okay with it, every time.

She went willingly.

If she wasn't so enraptured with him, she would be ashamed of herself. She wasn't supposed to follow after anyone, she was supposed to forge her own path, carve her own way, part the wind and change the tides and impact someone and something greater. She was a pirate, and she was hopelessly in love with another pirate, one who could never see her in the same light she saw him.

On dark days he was the sun, in the night he was the only thing that mattered and he was intoxicating. And this was dangerous. The thought was frightening in a way nothing else is, where if it came down to her life or his, she wouldn't even have to think.

Where do you go from there?

She scrubbed at her eyes and told herself she was over-thinking it, making something out of nothing. She could get herself hurt that way.

"Ah, there you are, Annie," Jack's rough voice called out, sounding brighter than it had in days, sounding chipper, like he'd changed something internally. She smiled, and the action didn't feel forced or strained. Falling into happiness was natural around him.

She turned to face him, away from the sea and her thoughts, pushing back any doubt, any mistake, any wish for something a little bit better. She was with Jack, and that was enough.

His hand fell over hers on the railing, and his lips curved into a smirk that didn't seem as hollow as it had before. He'd pushed down the discomfort, the pain of memory and images of deserted islands in the middle of the Caribbean. He'd managed to pull himself from the currents of depression and self hatred.

Her eyes met his and the blue took him back, they looked sad, huge and worried like she was drowning in her own thoughts. His rough hand gripped hers tighter and she smiled brighter, like she needed to touch to assure herself that he was real. Jack sent a long look over the horizon and nodded to himself, as if confirming a theory about the weather.

"Tonight," he said softly. The mutiny was on, there was no other way. She turned to him completely, her hand rising almost hesitantly to brush against his cheek. Her mouth opened, her brow furrowed as if she wasn't sure what to say. His expression faltered, just enough for her to be sure he wore a mask and it was tough but it wasn't real. He hated the decision, hated himself even more for making it. But he felt boxed in, shifted into a cage where mutiny was the only answer. The only way to save them and escape Blackbeard and the Fountain and Angelica and the British. They had too many enemies this adventure, too many sides to protect and he was being pushed to do what he hated.

But Anna was watching him like he was the sun and that was always comforting, something he could rely on every time. Her eyes were entrancing and endless and they didn't hold any of the doubt he felt in his chest. Only understanding and safety. Her smile was soft and careful and when she spoke it sent chills down his spine and warmth in his chest.

"I don't think any less of you."


	13. Chapter 13

**Look at me, bein' so awesome that I add a whole new scene before the canon part. It holds a sneaky secret, and if anyone thinks they can guess the plot twist, inbox me. IF YOU CAN GUESS IT, I will write a scene of your choosing. If I like what comes out, I will include it in this story. Who knows, you might get it right! For my extra work, you should show your love through reviews.**

** -Han**

_Tonight _was a word whispered on the wind until sundown, passing from sailor to sailor down the line, gruffly mumbled high in the rigging and in between the back-breaking strokes of soapy water into the deck. Fingers trembled over rope when the Quartermaster stalked by, breath catching and the word frozen on their lips. Unwilling to speak.

It circled back to Jack and Anna, now on opposite sides of the ship to spread their infection of mutiny as far as possible, so often it was marginally comical. But Jack's face was still stony and his eyes were still broken on the edges and hollow, his movements were monotonous and hollow. His boots found home on the mast, a loose rope tied around his waist for safety he didn't need, his eyes staring off at the horizon, sending prayers to the sweet moving ocean like it could answer him. His lips barely moved, and his voice was carried away on the soft wind, but something told him Calypso heard him.

"I've heard that prayer is the last act of a desperate man," a calm voice told him, floating and weaving through the salt air until it registered to Jack. He turned, facing the missionary tied securely to the mast only two or three feet away from him.

The young man was handsome, wind-swept blonde hair tangled around him, blue-green eyes that seemed to swell and change like the sea, facing away from him. Jack grinned, but it didn't feel natural.

"S'that so?" Jack inquired, feigning casual while his eyes scanned the crew below, watching the constant whispers of _tonight _be carried from man to man. The missionary smiled, his lips turning up in a soul-deep expression of content.

"That's what I've heard, but I don't agree with it," he said brightly, as if this brave new world was still beautiful, though rope bound him to the mast, biting into his skin uncomfortably. "I think prayer is the soul reaching out for answers, trying to reach God because it's known all along that He is listening."

"Still preachin' from here? You are a resilient one, I'll give you that," Jack answered with a roughish grin plastered onto his tan face. "But perhaps prayer would be of better use to you."

"Phillip," he said in greeting, the smile on his lips flicking between bright and content, unsure what emotion to take and Jack was the first real contact he'd had since Angelica had ordered him to be taken alive. Everyone else spat their words, threatened violence, laughed with the enthusiasm of the devil himself. But this one had that retrievable spark of humanity still burning in his chest.

"Jack."

"Who was your companion?" Phillip asked after a beat of silence that lasted long enough for Jack to realize he should be working. He went back to pulling ropes, keeping his footing steady and his place close to the young man firm. Phillip looked down as best he could from his bound position and searched with aqua eyes for the hard worker with the tangled brown hair and warm eyes. He found her elegantly tangled in ropes, pulling where she ought to and using others for support as she hung tipped to the side over the railing, eyes on the horizon like Jack's had been only moments before.

"Annie, my partner in crime, as it were," Jack explained as best he could without delving deeper into realms he didn't completely understand. Trying to define her was like trying to define the sea, it was so real and faraway and mysterious but he knew it better than he knew himself. And she was beautiful but the shadows in her heart were terrible. There was danger and fragility.

"She seems to be willing to follow you anywhere," Phillip commented with genuine interest, watching the way she tossed ropes to other sailors by her side, heaving in time with barked orders.

"It's a mutual agreement designed to maximize our chances at the ultimate adventure," Jack answered assuredly, and leaving out the details didn't mean anything. This tied up missionary didn't care about the emotions that swirled in the pirate Captain's chest, the knowledge that Captain Jack Sparrow didn't follow just anyone.

"You're the famous two aren't you? The ones that have seen the Locker and defeated Jones?" Phillip asked despite himself and Jack swore he saw excitement behind those sea-colored eyes, like he was perched delicately on the edge of a waterfall, everything in him begging to jump and feel the air rushing past his skin.

"Aye," Jack said with another smirk, baiting and he knew it and he didn't care. The pressure of _Tonight _was weighing on his mind and he didn't want to think about it. He wanted something to do, someone to play, something to distract himself from the reality of becoming the enemy.

"So, she's the Pirate Princess?" he asked, reiterating what he'd already said but he had to be sure. Blue-green eyes were trying to restrain their brightness, remember his vows to a God who was just, one who saved him, brought him away from the sins of the sea and the pirates that rode it.

"That she is," Jack said brightly, a new danger in his eyes, black and brown warring for dominance in his gaze and black won out, a raw protectiveness he pretended he didn't have. "And she's not to be trifled with."

"Wasn't intending to," Phillip replied quickly, turning his eyes back to the horizon with a kind of peace in them Jack only found in the middle of the night, when he allowed himself to trace his fingers up and down Anna's spine without worrying about appearances or the fear in his own chest.

They stood in silence, ropes around their waist, one to keep him safe, and the other to keep him bound, both to an uncertain future.

Xx

A candle was lit in the darkness, flickered, warm yellow-orange light bathing the cramped crewmen's cabin with light, grey smoke curling elegantly above the open flame. Sailors leaned forward, dirty faces illuminated and fingers curling and uncurling in the fabric of their clothes.

"The topic, gentlemen, is mutiny," Jack said softly, blowing out the matchstick and watching the effect of his rough voice on the men. A collective shiver was forced down the backs of those crowded around the barrels serving as a table.

"Mutiny most foul," Anna added without missing a beat, her hair finally combed down so it fell in almost graceful waves around her face, curling in some places. Her blue eyes glowed in the firelight, while Jack's seemed to swallow the glimmer in blackness.

"Aye. I signed up to sail under Jack Sparrow, not some pretender," Salaman said darkly, rubbing a hand over his greying beard. Other men nodded along.

"And a lady at that!" Ezekiel added in a hoarse whisper, brown hair plastered to his face. Anna glared, moving so swiftly some of the men almost didn't see her stab a small dagger into the barrel, within an inch of the sailor's hand.

"Is there something wrong with a lady?" Anna asked in a deadly whisper, calm and danger mingled in her words and Jack smirked at Ezekiel from next to her as if enjoying his icy fear. Silence enveloped the table, her words sinking in and men leaned back, away, anything to avoid her anger.

She smiled to herself, just the slightest bit proud, and leaned back in her seat as the Cabin Boy rushed in. The entirety of the armory was laid down in a clatter of steel on wood, swords wrapped tightly in a burlap sack to keep the boy's hands safe from razor edges.

"I got 'em," he said with a bright smile, boyish face lighting with childish pride. "All of 'em."

"Good lad!" the sailors said boisterously, patting him on the back with roughish glee. He sat next to Anna, pleased with himself as his dirty face was bathed in the warm glow of the candle. The pirate woman gave him a warm nod, something that made him sit even straighter, and tipped his hat back for him, allowing him to see better. He grinned, she smiled back.

"On to it, then. Blackbeard. What are his habits?" Jack asked, leaning forward with a reluctant commitment that he couldn't back down from.

"Stays mostly to his cabin," Scrum said quietly, among mummers of consent from the rest of the men, repeating what the scruffy man said with growing confidence.

"Yes. But when he comes out…" Anna trailed off, hoping someone would fill in the blanks and lead them to something substantial, something they could use.

"He don't really come out," the Cabin Boy said with a furrowed brow, straining to remember an instant the feared pirate Captain had graced the deck with his presence.

"He must come out _sometime,"_ Jack insisted, eyes wide and surprise coloring his features, his fingers tapping a random beat on the barrel. The crew muttered incoherently. "Have any of you sailed with him before?" he asked, his brow rising and tapping halting. More muttering met his statement and suddenly none of the sailors could meet his eyes.

"Have any of you even _seen _him before?" Anna asked, leaning forward in shocked interest. She hadn't been expecting that, and when more mumbling met her words, she realized they might make it out of this.

"Stays to his cabin," Jack listed.

"No one's sailed with him," Anna added.

"Seen him," Jack muttered disbelievingly.

"Good news, gentlemen," Anna said brightly after a beat of silence, a cocky grin rising to her lips.

"This is _not _Blackbeard's ship," they said together, as if they'd planned out their conversation, decided who would say what and when. The men watched the volley of words with rapt attention, the way they were able to operate without even a glance at the other was all the proof they needed that they were a team.

"This is _not _the _Queen Anne's Revenge," _Jack finished with a slap to the table that clanged through the room from the impact of his rings. The sailors remained silent, awkwardly fiddling with the edges of their clothing in an attempt to dispel their doubt. Blackbeard's name alone struck fear down the spines of pirates everywhere, and his presence was palpable aboard the ship, the heavy air of death and punishment.

"Oh, oh, now, this be the _Queen Anne's Revenge_, right enough," Scrum said insistently, shaking his head at Jack as if the pirate were a poor confused soul who needed to be shown the light. Jack cocked his head in feigned interest.

"How do you know?" he asked, leaning back slightly in his seat, his leg brushing Anna's slightly. The contact sent sparks dancing across his body and he hadn't really spoken to her all day, hadn't really touched her, held her. They'd gone weeks before without real contact, but when he got it back it was always intoxicating.

When this was over, when the world slowed down a bit more and they had time to enjoy the night, they'd lie on the deck and watch the stars. They did that often, Gibbs had grown used to it by now.

"I've seen the name. On the back of the ship," Scrum said in his thick accent, making the words sound uneducated. He nodded with a sloppy grin on his lips that didn't help the image. Jack stared, silent, seeming shocked by the idiocy.

"Gentlemen...sirs...fellow conscriptees," Anna said quietly, turning the coin from the Amazon over in her fingers, watching it glitter in the low light of the candle. "You have been monstrously deceived."

"We've been decepted, then?" Salaman asked, repeating what she'd just said. The pirate team rolled their eyes as one and wondered how long they'd be forced to suffer such a crew. They were used to quick wit and quicker swords and the understanding of their mannerisms. This was new and they didn't like it.

"Yes. You've nay been informed of the destination," Jack pressed, hoping to infect the minds of the men with mutiny, with the desire to rid themselves of a Captain they'd never even seen. "Death lies before us, as we sail...for the Fountain of Youth."

Silence met his words; Anna stopped turning the coin, the sound of cool metal against skin fading into the background of heavy breathing and stuttering heartbeats.

"It be a sorry plight," Jack added, his eyes sympathetic to nearly a fault but they couldn't tell the difference. Annie hid a smile, taking a moment to give the little boy a soothing pat on his shoulder. He reminded her of little Will, the boy she pulled from the confines of a burning ship, the one she took scars for, flames to her arms and leg. The boy who jerked her from the cold shell she'd created for her and made her be the child she wanted to. The boy who loved Elizabeth from the start, and needed a sister to protect him, to whisper that it'd be okay. And she stayed with him and poured her heart into everything he needed and was there for him.

The boy she missed.

So she comforted the dirty Cabin Boy and prayed he wouldn't suffer as much as Will had. Prayed someone would protect him past this adventure, shield him from the horrors of a world he shouldn't have to face so young.

"Death…for certain," a crewman whispered, and Anna felt the boy lean into her touch, just the slightest. Jack caught the motion and sent her a soft look, one that screamed understanding. The boy was afraid, and fear wasn't treated well amongst the harsh seas and hardened pirates. But Anna still remembered what it was like to hear Will wake up screaming nonsense about a ship catching fire and he was drowning and he couldn't breathe and she had to help him breathe.

Anna remembered rubbing soothing circles on the boys back, softly whispering or singing off-key but reassuringly. And when he was older, she would run her fingers through his hair and pretend he was small. It was easier that way and she _knew _he needed the comfort. Almost as much as she did.

"Unless we take the ship," Jack reminded them quickly, taking up where Anna might have with an ease he associated with the tides and water running over rocks and slipping through his fingers.

He stood strongly, hoping to encourage the men into action. Scrum stood as well, slamming a knife into the barrel in front of him with more vigor than Jack had thought the small man could muster.

"We take the ship. _Now!"_ He screamed, running up stairs with his sword drawn and a battle cry falling from his lips and echoing. Silence consumed them and no one else had moved.

"Go on, then," Jack said dismissively, waving his hands at them expectantly.

The roar of men could be heard for miles, the sound of swords being grabbed quickly, boots on the stairs like thunder from above. The mutiny was in motion. Weapons were past as they moved, everyone armed and everyone ready. Only Jack, Anna, and the Cabin Boy remained behind.

"Go lay in your hammock," Anna instructed softly, her eyes soft but insistent. "If this goes wrong, pretend to be asleep."

The boy left reluctantly, throwing concerned glances back at the pirate lady, who stood straight in the half-lit room, Jack beside her and her sword in her hand. She may not come back. An encouraging smile swept over her features and the boy watched her face change, soften, become something bright and beautiful and ignorant to the hardships of the world.

"You're good with him," Jack commented quietly, as if suddenly doubting her ability to handle their job, their mission, their intent to kill and take over and move on. She shrugged.

"I've had enough experience with saving little boys," she said brightly, recalling the Pirate Boy and Will. He chuckled despite himself, a grin that seemed to glow in the dark room.

Jack took back his doubts. He could see the thrill of the hunt working its way back into her eyes, blue lighting up and spreading out and becoming so alive he could taste it. She led the way up the stairs, expertly dodging major attacks until they arrived at the first mate's cabin. The night was already filled with sounds of bloodshed, the marionette-crewmen trying to fight back with disjointed lumbering moves of power and impact while the mutineers pushed on with a quick agility. The sick sound of steel passing through skin and muscle and sinew filled their ears along with the strangled cry, half-shouted expression of pain.

Jack hesitated at the door, briefly considering going inside, speaking to Angelica, telling her something important about the kind of person he'd become. The way he'd changed.

Annie sensed his hesitation.

She knew, and she didn't want to and she wished she could believe that he wasn't thinking about the Spanish beauty. She turned, launching herself into the fray with abandon, reckless moves driving her heartbeats in an attempt to avoid the awkward conversation. The pain that would follow.

She had already come to terms with the knowledge that Jack would slip up, eventually. She hadn't expected the reality to hurt this much, a deep, stabbing pain that went deeper than any blade could have. She caught glimpses of him standing at her door as she drove steel into her enemy, clashed swords and turned in a flurry of movements Jack didn't see. Jack wasn't looking at her.

She'd left in only a second, was engaged in fierce battle in the next and Jack barely had time to take a breath before he realized that she was no longer beside him. The air around him was cold and he wished he could convince himself that she'd been pulled away. That she hadn't gone willingly.

He rather doubted it.

Jack turned away from the heavy wooden door, taking only a moment to slam the latch down, locking it in place and eventually Angelica would wake, would find a way out and the fury which Hell hath no would reign down on him. Maybe Anna would fight her.

That would be something to see. He scanned the masses of warring bodies until he caught her familiar face.

The way she fought made a knot of dread rise in his stomach. She was uncontrolled, inattentive, moving on instinct without looking, without thinking. Anna's usually graceful movements were weighted down and smashed and cracked with a visible pain, something in her soul that was leeching the fight from her body with each parry. She was losing it.

Jack moved before he was sure of it, blocking a deadly slash aimed her way with an ease she should have had too.

"You don't have to help me," Anna shouted above the screams of bloodshed, and her words weren't bitter but Jack could tell something hurt in her. It hit him a moment later and he twisted, pressing his back against hers. The silent communication was all it took and he could feel her muscles relaxing, her movements returning to their fluid nature, the ingrained understanding of a sword flooding back to her.

Jack had her back.

He wasn't leaving any time soon.

The zombies weren't going down, and though the pirate team half-expected them not to, disappointment and anxiety rose in their minds. They'd been down this road before and their first adventure was back in their heads and Barbossa was the bad guy then, and Will didn't like Jack, and her secret had come out and they were all over the place.

They swung around as on, hands clasped as the free slashed outward, cutting through the puppet-sailors with ease. They kept coming.

In his peripheral, Jack could see Angelica fighting her way through the mutineer's with practiced affluence. He suddenly wished he'd never arrived at that Spanish Convent, a thought he'd never had before, when those few weeks had been some of his best and the swell of pride he thought at the moment had never been anything less than satisfying. But she had already escaped her quarters and was cutting her way through to him with fury in her eyes and angry Spanish spewing from her lips.

Anna saw her too, and swung again, pulling Jack with her as they made their way towards the mast together. The harder they fought, they realized the enemy was losing consciousness, not dying but no longer a threat, they were dropping heavily to the deck with each hard stab, punch, kick, hit to the head.

Jack stopped at the sight of Salaman, and both of them glanced up the mast as one to see the missionary, Phillip, looking down on them with something like regret. He nodded to his comrade as Anna grinned at him in understanding. She shifted, bracing herself against the mast to provide cover and signaled him and Salaman to go up.

She slashed as Gunner came at her with an axe, dancing out of the way as it slammed into the wood behind her head. She swallowed, taking the opportunity to stomp down on his foot with the heel of her boot and jerk up with her knee, driving it into his stomach. He wobbled, his grip on the axe slipping and she punched him, following it immediately with her elbow, smashing it into his temple. He flew back far enough for a passing sailor to throw a weighted net over him that sent him crumpling to the ground. Anna grinned to herself, satisfied with her work.

Overhead Jack had reached Phillip, bracing himself on the missionary's left side while Salaman took the right.

"You're either with us or against us," the sailor said threateningly, holding his knife to the young man's throat.

"I'm not with you neither am I against you!" Phillip shouted imploringly, pleading as he met Jack's eyes.

"Can he do that?" Salaman asked Jack in confusion, the knife held still. Jack shrugged.

"He's religious, I believe it's required," Jack supplied nonchalantly, taking the initiative and slicing the ropes at Phillip's waist with ease. The young man groped out for a rope to hold on to, breathing heavily with relief written on his face.

Jack propelled down, rope burning his palms but he didn't care. A moment later and his boots hit the deck, ready to take the fight again.

"_Fight to the bitter end, you cack-handed deck apes!" _Anna shouted from her position at the foot of the stairs, spinning quickly to kick back another zombie. Her eyes were narrowed, bloodlust and excitement warring over her features and Jack could see the strength behind every move, the coiled, dangerous way her body moved reminded him of a viper. She could bite you before you were even sure of what was happening.

He joined her as soon as he could, chuckling in spite of himself when he realized they were winning. Zombies were being tied down, pinned up, and slapped around. They were going to survive this.

The Quartermaster had been attracted to her shouts, and was bearing down on Anna by the time Jack arrived, his ugly face twisted even further into a scowl of rage. He stabbed, hating that it had no effect, but glad it took the attention away from Annie. She was strong, but not strong enough to take the brunt of the huge zombie's force. Jack punched, a quick shot to the jaw that had the enemy stumbling back into a pocket of mutineers.

"Take him, tie him down," Jack ordered as he grabbed Anna's hand and rushed up the stairs with her. Subtly, he checked her for injuries as they mounted the steps, casting his dark eyes over her body for wounds. She wasn't bleeding, and he realized this was the first fight out of three recent and violent ones she hadn't been hurt on.

Maybe things were starting to change, their luck was turning, things were going to get better. Her hand clasped in his, they faced the deck and their new crew together.

"_The ship is ours!" _Jack shouted, his rough voice ringing across the ship and the water and this life and into the next. There was a rough kind of joy there, an animalistic pride, and Anna shared it in her bloodstream, every heartbeat screaming _wedidit. _

Cheers rose from the crowd of sailors and Angelica glared from her location, grabbed back by two men with steady hands refusing to let go. Feral joy and happiness rippled through the men and for a moment they were on top of the world and nothing could hurt them and they would be okay.

The Captain's cabin doors opened, heavy footfalls breaking a new, heavy silence and Jack and Anna's grins froze on their faces, dread pooling in their stomachs, and their minds racing to get out of this somehow, any way they could. They turned as one, slow hesitant move of their bodies until they could face the new arrival.

Blackbeard stood proudly on the deck of the _Queen Anne's Revenge, _his eyes roaming the frozen crew below him with lazy contempt and a flask of whisky at his side, his beard smoldering faintly, curls of smoke dancing through the night air.

Jack's luck _had _changed. For the worse. 


	14. Chapter 14

**This chapter just did not want to be written. I really hope you guys like it, it took me days to be happy with it. I think it turned out alright, but please tell me what you think. I was really surprised that no one could guess my plot twist, but if you can pick it now, I'll still write a scene of your choice! And to the reviewer who said Phillip was OOC, I find it harder in general to write him, since I'm giving him his own backstory, something he didn't get at all in the movie. That will inevitably impact the way he behaves, so I'm trying my best, but he might be a little bit twisted in order to fit the whole plot. I hope that's okay with you guys! PLEASE review!**

** -Han**

Soft wind made smoke curl around a sun-browned face, lines around coal eyes spoke of tension he tried not to communicate as he rested lazily on his back leg, his soot-stained fingers reached for the hilt of his sword, blood boiling beneath his skin and his heart beating with the intent to kill. _Mutiny._ A word pirate captains abhorred with the same potency missionaries despised the Devil. The notion that men, filth he picked up from the side of the road, the dirt beneath his boots, could turn against him, demand him to step down or be killed, was insane. It was like telling a bird it couldn't fly.

It just wasn't done.

But here he was, forced out of the warm confines of his cabin for the first time since they left London in the dead of night with two kidnapped pirates and a new crew in tow. His eyes narrowed against the glare of lanterns, warm light mixing with the dead-silent air and he resisted the urge to grin. He didn't think they were even breathing, too struck by the terror he held sway over, the darkness he carried with him.

The swish of his black clothing in the wind was the only sound, as his eyes roamed the deck. Men were frozen in place, hands slack around the ropes that bound his creations, his perfect workers. The bodies he'd reanimated were loyal, were unflinchingly faithful to their master. The others, dirty and bleeding, were stopped in what might have been victory, smiles dropping from their faces as quickly as they had risen, dropping behind a horizon faster than the sun ever could have. Fear dilated their eyes and made their palms sweaty and he loved it. Cherished it.

Blackbeard's gaze found his daughter, slipping from her bonds with the same grace her mother had, the grace that captured the famous pirate's eye and drawn him to her. It was inevitable, and he didn't regret it. His daughter was beautiful, a Spanish flower plucked from in between the cracks of cobblestone, salvaged from the dirt and the stone and the pain and the hatred of the world around her. She was quick and loyal and a pirate. And she might just save his life. That was a better consolation prize than he could have ever considered. A daughter tied him down, no matter how beautiful, but at least she might be useful.

He turned back to face the helm, catching slow movement in his peripheral as the two Angelica had drugged and taken took slow steps towards the stairs. He addressed his crew with a small smile and a warming assurance, like everything would be okay.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly, pausing to take a swig from his bottle with a lightheartedness he hoped was communicated to the men. He swallowed, amber liquid burning a pleasant trail of fire down his throat. His grip on the bottle tightened and when he threw it to the deck, it shattered in fragmented pieces of glass, ones he'd make his men pick up by hand later, scraping the insides of their palms, drawing lines of blood that would remind them of their servitude. "I be placed in a bewilderment."

Jack and Anna had reached the stairs, taking slow, barely visible steps down in an attempt to put distance between themselves and Blackbeard, Edward Teach, the most feared pirate to roam the seas. Her hand gripped the railing, using it to steady her shaky legs, her body rolling in the aftershock of battle as the adrenalin left her body. Jack was doing the same just behind her, his shoulder brushing hers when they stopped as one and started up again, to not attract attention. Their eyes were on the Captain, rapt on him as he spoke in a tone somewhere between comfort and danger. They didn't like the combination, and something was about to happen. They just didn't know what.

"There I were, resting," Blackbeard continued as Angelica came into view. "And upon a sudden, I hear an ungodly row on deck." He reached down with dirty fingers to caress the jeweled hilt of his sword, black eyes watching the rigging shift, as if in powerful wind when the night was nearly dead. "Sailors abandoned their posts, without orders, without leave." His tone had turned deadly, icy cold and piercing and men swallowed audibly in the night.

Blackbeard's face was still carefully blank, revealing nothing. That was the most disconcerting thing about him, and Anna leaned away, bumping up against Jack and reveling in the touch, the reminder that there was something safe here. Something that wouldn't hurt her.

"Men, before the mast...taking the ship for themselves." The ropes snaked their way across the deck, catching Jack and Anna's eyes as the twisted cord slithered across red and black planks towards the sailors. Jack had always hated snakes. He moved slowly, tugging on the back of Anna's shirt when she didn't move with them, as they side-stepped the rigging come alive. "What be that, First Mate?" Blackbeard asked his daughter.

"Mutiny!" She shouted, her voice echoing off the water around them until it was in the heads of every man, ringing around their heads until they could feel it in their bodies. It was a part of them now. They were branded for it, the word was singed into their skin and they all knew what happened to mutineers.

"Again?" He requested with a hand cupped around his ear as if he didn't understand.

"Mutiny!" Angelica shouted louder, her Spanish accent making the word sound like the beginning of a song, a poem, something lyrical and graceful. It wasn't.

"Aye...mutiny," Blackbeard said softly as a rope slithered its way towards the flesh of an ankle, once it met skin, it would tighten, bruise, cut off blood flow and pull. It would _hurt. _That was its job, to make people hurt. "And what fate befalls mutineers, now we know the answer to that...do we not? Mutineers. _Hang!" _He shouted, gripping his sword and raising it into the air, his blade cutting the silence.

The ship surged forward, knocking the crew off their feet. Anna's head hit the deck hard, her body wracked with repercussions as she struggled to make sense of the pain thundering through her skull. Before she could stand, her body was ripped away from the ground and from Jack and vaulted into the air with bruising force. She swallowed a scream, trying to remain strong as ropes wound themselves around her legs, digging into the soft flesh with no remorse.

Her blue eyes caught men being strangled, dragged up the stairs with purple faces, eyes bugging out as the body attempted to pull in air fruitlessly. She struggled, turning her body in midair with her writhing body. The ropes held strong, and her eyes caught the Cabin Boy, drawn out by the noise. His little body was wrapped in cord, squeezing too tight and his eyes were blown wide with terror.

Sailors tried to jump ship, vault themselves into the night sky and let their bodies be enveloped by the calm waters, the comforting touch of the ocean. Anna wished she could do that, could let her body slip beneath the waves, let Calypso take her where she will. She winced when the crewmen's bodies were caught, reeled in with agonizing quickness, jerked back over the deck until their limbs were twisted, disfigured, ripped out of their sockets. Blood spotted the deck, and the wood seemed to absorb it, drink it in, like it was thirsty. Anna swallowed, forcing herself to reach up, her clumsy fingers pulling futility on her bonds, trying to get free. They tightened, cutting off all circulation to her legs, as they snaked further up her waist.

Upside down, the ship moved her as its will, her arms were heavy, hanging past her hair and her hair brushed her elbows. Blood rushed to her head and suddenly she hated gravity, it won't leave her alone and it's weighing her down, bringing her closer to that deck, the ship that wants to witness her bleeding. The night is cold on her skin, and the rope crushes her stomach, feeling so much stronger than the corset that served as her brace. Her ribs hadn't fully healed and the agonizingly tight hold the ropes had on her sent shocks up pain up and down her spine.

Jack could see her face twist in anguish as the ropes constricted visibly around her ribcage, crushing her lungs, straining her injuries. He winced in sympathy as they were dragged closer together, the rough movements of the rigging crashing their bodies together. He could hear her gasp of breath, could tell she was trying not to scream. He wriggled uncomfortably in his own bonds, feeling the heat from Anna's body as their backs bounced against each other in repercussion. She winced each time and Jack pretended like he couldn't hear it.

The sounds of screams around them had dulled, but the panic was rising. It could only get worse from here, and they all knew of Blackbeard's reputation. He killed and he did it violently, agonizingly, brutally. He wanted you to suffer.

Anna felt her body being lowered towards the helm, her body pressed against Jack's. They were back to back again, dangling like caught game before the hunter, Blackbeard stared emotionlessly back at them. She swallowed and slathered on a fake grin, something that looked sickly in the lantern-light. She felt fake, scared, hidden away in a small corner where nothing would harm her.

She at least wanted the chance to fight back, but he was too cowardly, too afraid. She wanted to tear and rip and slash and project anger that would consume like a flame and would push the pirate Captain before her down into the deepest pits of Hell, and she would stand over him and laugh. She felt like a pirate, in that moment, she felt as taken with rage and bloodlust as people assumed bandits to be. She felt swept up in winds of hatred and seas of fury.

Jack's body heat brought her back to earth, made her remember where she was and who could hurt her and the impending possibility of her death. Blackbeard would not hesitate to kill her, and no one would stand up for her. Angelica didn't need her, she had Jack, and the other crewmembers didn't like her by any means. Jack was in the same place as her, no one would listen to him. She was alone in this.

That fake smile was back, cocky and sarcastic and the mask was impenetrable to everyone but Jack. Even from the corner of his eyes, he could tell that the glass was about to shatter, crumble around her body and then he would be there to pick up the pieces. Because she didn't expect him too. She thought she was alone and sometimes it took him by surprise. He'd thought he'd been there long enough to prove to her that she had someone to lean on.

Softly, he allowed his shoulder to brush hers, an intentional commutations through touch he prayed she understood. The little grin she gave was a bit more real, as she tipped her head to rest on his shoulder upside down.

"Captain, I wish to report a mutiny," Jack said with a carefully stoic face, twisting his body until he faced Blackbeard, the force that drove him to mutiny, that could end his life.

"I can name fingers!" Anna shouted, wriggling again until both of them could look at the enemy at once.

"And I can point names," Jack said seriously, no hint of doubt in his dark eyes.

"No need Mr. Sparrow, Ms. Windsor. They are sheep," he said calmly, gesturing to the expanse of crewmen tangled in the rigging. "You their Shepard."

Xx

When their feet found the ground again, Jack took her hand in his. In a singular moment of silence, Jack managed to tell her everything she needed to hear. He was there and he wasn't leaving and she should stop thinking so. This was getting out of hand. She grinned in response and tugged him towards the stairs. Blackbeard was beginning to descend them, Angelica trailing behind like a lost puppy. They hurried to catch up, only retracting their joint hands at the last possible second.

"Have we mentioned, sir, what a lovely ship you have?" Anna asked in what she hoped was a flattering voice. The _Queen Anne's Revenge _was as far from lovely as you could get, it seemed like its own category of monster, a new breed of Leviathan. It looked evil and it looked ready to kill.

Blackbeard turned on a dime, faster than his older body seemed able to, and Anna found herself facing the barrel of a pistol, the fine detailing on the handle catching her eye. "A fitting last sight for a doomed soul," he growled, his finger itching to pull the trigger.

"Perhaps you've forgotten, mate?" Jack asked condescendingly. "You need her."

"What need do I have of her when I have you?" Teach countered, waving the pistol for emphasis. Jack smirked, gold caps shining in the candlelight.

"Who says I know it all?" Jack asked quietly. "Who's to say we don't both know half. Who's to say we haven't planned for this?" Jack was lying. He knew it, Anna knew it. She couldn't be prouder of him.

"You're bluffing," Angelica spat, moving into view with a glare thrown their way. "You're always_ have_ to have all the cards. This is no different."

"Really? So sure, are we, Angelica?" Jack taunted, a grin firmly in place. "Why don't we see and find out? It would just be _terrible _if you were wrong, though, wouldn't it?" Silence enveloped them and Blackbeard's hand wavered for a moment, before stilling again, steel in his eyes. Jack stared down the barrel of the gun with less bravado than he had a moment before.

"If I don't kill a man every now and then, they forget who I am," Blackbeard reasoned with a cunning glare.

"_Coward!" _The rough voice caught Jack off guard and he almost looked skyward towards the mast. But he's let Phillip down himself, and now the missionary was shouting at the most feared pirate ever to roam the seas.

"Hmm?" Blackbeard looked up to see the tanned and strong missionary he'd taken alive glaring at him from across the deck as he marched his way towards their small group.

"They do not forget! Your crew sees you for the miscreant you are! A _coward_! No matter how many you slay!" Phillip bellowed, his voice swept up in a power Anna didn't understand, like God was speaking through him. Her eyes were drawn to him as if he were a puzzle she couldn't put together, sea-green eyes imprinted in her memory like it was something she should remember. Something important.

"Twice in one day, I find myself in a bewilderment," Blackbeard commented dryly as the Quartermaster held out a sword to keep the missionary back.

"You are not bewildered, you are afraid," the young man sneered. "You dare not walk the path of righteousness, the way of the light." When people spoke like that, they'd been saved from something horrible. Anna knew that. She could only guess what horrors he had seen to make him so devoted to his faith.

There was once a time when she believed, when she was young and unsure and running about London without permission and praying for forgiveness to make it better. She used to believe angels watched over her, guarded her like the angelic warriors they were painted to be, wings casting protective shadows over her body. And then she saw the pain on the underside of London, a little boy ready to be executed in the streets, a burning city, a violent prince. If there was a God, he didn't care. She'd much rather place her faith in those who answered.

"No, sir, the truth of it be much simpler than all that. I'm a bad man," Blackbeard said tauntingly, a smirk hovering over his usually emotionless features.

"That too," Phillip amended.

"I might have to kill you too, catechist," Blackbeard muttered, turning the pistol onto him, lined up with his handsome face. His arm was pushed down a moment later.

"_No!" _Angelica shouted, the need to save her father's soul was pulsing through her veins and she couldn't let a sin so grave be cast upon him. His last chance was the out-spoken missionary in front of them.

"Oh, Latin blood, like her mother!" Blackbeard joked, the ties to the church were annoying and consuming and they got in the way of his wrongdoings.

"Father, I beg you!" Angelica pleaded.

"Ah, there I be again, forgetting why the missionary was here. My daughter fears for my soul, what's left of it. You truly wish to save me, my child?" he asked, stroking her cheek with a gentle hand, his fingers like sandpaper over her soft flesh.

"Every soul can be saved," She whispered softly, brown eyes warm and open for the first time since Anna met the other woman. She felt like she was intruding.

"Be that true, young cleric?" Blackbeard asked, flicking his eyes to the young man. The eyes of rolling seas had calmed, his breathing had slowed.

"Yes. Though you I see as a bit of long shot," he admitted with a small smile hovering around the edges of his lips. Anna stifled a chuckle alongside Jack, and wondered again why he seemed so familiar. "Still, I pray for every unfortunate soul on this hellbound vessel," he said with such conviction that Anna believed her soul to be safe.

"You disarm me with your faith," he said quietly before turning towards the crew again. "Eight bells! Which of you unfortunate souls stood watch?"

"I did! I stood watch." Anna and Jack shouted at once, praying to save the crew they had coerced into mutiny. The others didn't deserve this. They couldn't let them die.

Blackbeard chuckled and looked to Gunner. The zombie looked up pointedly to the cook, a spindly older man with kind eyes and a warm face. Anna winced and turned away, her fists balling.

"You?" Teach asked the Cook with calculating eyes. The man nodded from his position in the rigging, tangled and caught like a fly in the spider's web. "Aye, the Cook. Perfect. Lower the longboat!"

The men moved in silence, lowering the boat as the Cook took an uncertain hold of the oars. Anna shook her head, turning away from the activity with broken eyes. She met Jack's gaze.

"This isn't right," she whispered, allowing Jack to place his hand on her shoulder. The comfort was endless and she needed it.

"Things rarely are these days," he answered softly. When Blackbeard walked towards the bow, they followed, everyone did, steps slow and halting. They felt like mourners. The Cook rowed unevenly, trying to put as much distance between himself and the ship as he could.

"We have to help him," she whispered, and she distantly realized Phillip was standing beside her, his anxious eyes rapt on the older man, lips open in a silent expression of prayer.

"What's he going to do?" The young man asked, flicking his eyes to the pirate woman's and freezing, recognition lighting in his eyes before he forced himself to dim it. He didn't have time to think.

Angelica was trying to fight for him, something Anna could at least appreciate, but Blackbeard wasn't having it. His orders were clipped and clear and he believed that mutiny should be punished, an example should be made. Angelica's words held no impact.

"So, you," he addressed Phillip, brushing off his daughter completely. "Now... A chance to show the worth of your prayers. Pray he be delivered from...evil?" The end was a question, a grin worming its way onto his features.

"Stop! Give that man a chance!" Phillip screamed, his face twisted in a soul-deep agony.

"Oh god," Anna whispered, and she was going to be sick. She was going to be sick. Jack gripped her hand tightly in his, not caring who could see them. She needed the comfort. Anna leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder just long enough to make up her mind. Before he could stop her, she bolted forward, gripping the edge of the railing and praying the man in the longboat had enough strength to follow her directions. "_Flip the boat! Use the pocket of air to breathe, and flip the boat! Quickly! Please!" _

It was too late.

Torrents of Greek Fire ripped through the night and engulfed the small longboat. She was pulled back roughly by Gunner, her forearms bruising with the force of his hold. She kicked, a feral grief in her eyes that every crewmember felt. Heads lowered in respect, some crossed themselves. Jack watched in silent sorrow, the reflection of fire playing across his coal eyes, bouncing off the black water, lighting the night with its destructive light.


	15. Chapter 15

**Okay, this took me forever, but I'm updating! Thank you guys so much for all the Favorite Stories and Authors and Alerts, you guys are amazing! To those of you who reviewed last chapter, thank you so much, your words really do make my day every single time I read what you have to say. I did have a winner on the plot twist guesser, so I WILL be writing that scene and I'm 99% sure I'll put it in the story. SO, Please review guys! PLEASE!**

** -Han**

"You know when I feel closest to our Maker? When I see suffering, pain, and anguish. That's when the true design of this world is revealed," Blackbeard said with reverence, watching fire engulf the small boat, the screams of the man inside drowned out by the roar of flame. The feared Captain's face was drawn in a calm serenity, one that seems to reach into the darkest pits of the man's chest, where a soul should reside. Instead, murky blackness resided there, pulling at his body and begging him for the carnage it loved, for the screams he needed to hear. Blood stained his hands and he liked it that way. The fire glowed against black water, and the look in his eyes was almost adoring, like he could read messages in the flames that spoke of love and heaven and beauty.

Anna had lost her fight, her body bent in half, head hanging towards the ground and her midsection caged in by Gunner's reanimated and grey arms. She hung limp, like a doll, her hair shielding her face as it hung around her. Jack thought he heard her praying.

"And I see it revealed when in times of hardship and tragedy, kindness and compassion are shown to those in need," Phillip said strongly, moving to stand in the firelight, his face bathed in heat and cast in half-shadows. The night around them seemed to suck him under, drown him, but he had to say something. His blue-green eyes were narrowed in an unwilling rage. He was supposed to love everyone, care for everyone, his God had asked it of him and he promised himself he would answer the call. But this man was a demon, a shadow on the planes God had molded, a scar on Earth.

"Perhaps you should pray for him to be unharmed, yes?" Blackbeard taunted, raising his hand for a second signal.

People were frozen, no one moved but Anna. Her body bucked, curses spewing from her lips as she tried to break from her human cage. Gunner held her tightly, her hair tossed back with the force of kicks, using the deck as leverage.

"_You bastard! You heartless evil son of a bitch!" _She shouted, her eyes watering and her midsection aching with the force of her capture's grip. His arms were bruising, her newly healing ribs screaming, but she refused to still.

The crew watched with grief, an array of gazes turned from the dissipating fire and everything was silent, everyone was still. Blackbeard stared with contempt, a smile peeking on the edges of his mouth.

A Bible tightened in the grip of a young missionary when Jack broke from the ranks of terrified sailors and approached the woman. Aqua eyes watched his steady movements, lacking the drunken sway Sparrow normally adopted. His brown eyes were endlessly sad, a grief that seemed to reach his soul and every loss he'd ever experienced was rushing through his mind, just at the sight of those eyes. Phillip's breath caught when Jack kneeled before Anna, still wrapped up in the automaton's arms.

Jack's movements were careful, slow, and so gentle. His hand brushed her cheek, he felt the wetness stain the palm of his hand. Her head jerked up, her blue eyes rimmed red and self-hatred laced in the hunch of her shoulders, the helpless limpness of her body. She'd gotten him killed, an innocent life, a comrade, someone she had worked with, forced into fighting for her and it was Will all over again. A sword through the heart or drowned in flames, it was her fault. She couldn't fix that.

The rest of the world faded away, and nothing mattered but this hole in her chest and the way Jack's hand felt against her cheek.

Angelica watched with mounting horror, her plans hinged on the notion that he could pull Jack back in, could whisper and nudge and sway and draw his attention and his feelings. Even she wouldn't go as far as to claim love, the thought was ridiculous. But when Anna went limp, tendons standing out on her neck from the strain of being bent in half, her brown hair falling in her face, and her eyes on the suave and charismatic pirate, Angelica doubted she could win this. Dependence swam in the apprehended woman's eyes, like Jack was the only thing that could put her back together when everything in her body wanted to die.

"_Please_…he…he could still be alive," Anna whispered, though she didn't believe it. He was dead, an old man she'd never gotten to know, a martyr for her cause. Her fight was drained away, pushed down by the absurd need to hope. To have something to believe in.

"_Again!" _Blackbeard shouted, grinning victoriously in the night. Anna choked, shuddered, another torrent of fire set free in the night, reflecting off of the tracks of tears. Phillip gripped his Bible tighter, white knuckling the broken-backed book. The words printed there couldn't help this man, but he prayed for salvation, for any hope left. His eyes found the girl again, the woman he didn't want to remember when streets were dirty and a church was the first home he had.

Gunner released Anna, roughly dropping her body to the deck. Jack caught her at the last second, gripping her forearms with an iron grasp that sent jolts of pain through her body. It was enough to keep her grounded.

The moments spent on deck as Blackbeard laughed the crew stood still in terror were some of the longest of Jack's life. Anna was nearly dead weight in his arms, guilt coursing between them, shared, and he knew she had expected to save him in time. She had intended to win and the grief weighing on her was heavy. She'd promised a little boy that it would be okay and now it amounted to lies and empty words. Anna had needed to prove something to herself, to Angelica, to Jack, to Blackbeard, to anyone who doubted her. She'd needed to prove that she could do something right. She failed.

But she didn't speak, or scream, or cry. Her body shuddered lightly, the only indication that she felt anything other than numbness. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, bent over so low no one else could see. Her breath caught, and he couldn't stop a small smile from rising to his face.

"This isn't good," Anna muttered, a shaky laugh that sounded nearly hysterical breaking from her chest. An anger rolled in her blue eyes, the fire that engulfed an innocent man. Revenge was on her mind and it was burning, taking hold in her chest. She couldn't go down this easily, not when Jack could remain strong. Not when he could be there for her and everyone else could be stoic. She wasn't that weak. "Not good at all."

"Look at it this way, love," Jack said brightly, slapping a hand to her back like he would any other sailor. His gold caps shone in the light, a grin that didn't seem all there. "It can only get better."

Xx

A knife sliced through the fabric of his sea-stained shirt, pinning him to the wall. Jack smiled shakily, hoping the winning grin could pull some favorable emotion from the walking carcass that was the Quartermaster. The walking dead man grunted in response, glaring at the pirate with cold eyes. Anna rolled her own from her position, shoulder to shoulder with Jack.

"Can only get better, huh?" she asked sarcastically, throwing a look at her best friend as he gave a shaky shrug.

"Well, at least we're never boring," Jack responded dryly, focusing his attention on Blackbeard as he breezed into the room. The older Captain maneuvered among cluttered dream catchers and incense and talismans. He was paranoid, Jack could work with that.

"Well, sir, we actually have no interest in the Fountain whatsoever, so if your heart is set, you may drop us off anywhere you like," Anna said as amiably as she could when hatred was rising in her system, begging her to be let out, needing to avenge the life of a man who didn't have to die, one she should have saved.

"That'll be all, Quartermaster," Blackbeard said calmly, his back turned to them. The monster stalked off, sending a last chilling glare at the two bound pirates. "Your words surround you like fog, make you hard to see," Teach commented with a careful blank look. Anna couldn't read him, but Jack's mind was racing, trying to find the best way to play this.

"And what of you? The mighty Blackbeard. Beheaded, they say. Still, your body swam three times around your ship then climbed back onboard." Jack spoke with a reverence he didn't know he could accomplish, and he was quoting Anna from that first adventure, stories told to Cotton when she thought no one else was listening. When she believed she was just an extra in her own tale. "And here you are. Running scared," Jack jeered, hoping to hit something, anything that could give him leverage.  
>Edward Teach stalked closer, his eyes roaming over Jack and Anna as if hunting prey, venom swirling just beneath his calm. He was dangerous and they should remember it. He's killed more than they could dream, slaughtered for the sheer impact of it. They couldn't stand up to him and a missionary couldn't reform him and nothing could stop him.<p>

"Scared," he scoffed, turning back to his desk, odds and ends scattered across the rich wood and detailed maps. His ash-stained fingers wandered over charms and amulets, stolen from around the world to extend his life, keep the sea air flowing into his lungs and the blood pumping through his body.

"To the Fountain," Anna answered, her blue eyes impossibly hard, and it was hard for the Captain to believe she'd been so broken only minutes before. She was a fighter, convinced to come back time and time again and every time she was hit she'd be ready to get you harder. But Teach had found a weakness, one Jack shared with her. People dying for them weighed heavily on their minds and in their hearts and he'd use that, kill them with it.

"The Quartermaster sees things before they happen," Blackbeard said softly, almost to himself. "He has foreseen my death, the oversight of such an event seen by my greatest foe. And so the fates have spoken. The threads of destiny woven."

Blackbeard's words were soft, rough, and the reluctance with which he spoke of death struck within Jack. He was afraid, no matter how impenetrable he appeared to be, the thought of death consumed him, drove his every movement, word, twitch. He was possessed by the Otherworld and his reluctance to reach it.

"You have a ridiculously high regard for fate, mate," Jack said truthfully, and it sounded almost like a warning, a promise to use the fear against the man if the time came. Anna's fingers danced over her shoulder, gripping the handle of her knife with careful movements, blue eyes flicking to Blackbeard as he sunk into his chair.

"And you?" Teach asked, directing his question at both of them, something Anna found refreshing when Angelica blocked her out continuously.

"I don't believe in destiny," Anna said plainly, her words filled with complete conviction. "I wouldn't have become a pirate if I did. Freedom is the whole point; nothing can define you but your own choices. Pretending otherwise is only an excuse for your own mistakes." Venom laced her words but her eyes were calm, blank.

Blackbeard's eyes narrowed, his lips pressed in a thin life, gaze was like daggers on her skin and Anna was reveling in the hostility, it fueled her anger, made her stronger. It blocked away the pain and made something in her body rise, take hold, a desperate need to protect herself, to beat the bad guy and _win _something.

"I'm skeptical of predicting any future which includes me," Jack added helpfully, grinning despite the taught tension between the three others. He reached for his own knife, wiggling it skillfully. He realized that Anna had already managed to sneak hers behind her back.

"It be foolish to _battle _fate, but I'd be tempted to cheat it," Teach admitted as Jack managed to pull the knife from the wall. "I will reach the Fountain. You will lead me." His words were a command, and there was nothing they could do about it. "I will not fall to a half a man under the eyes of that Irish _slut_!" Composure was lost for a moment, broken, fractured.

The two pirates paused in their slow, even steps towards his desk, knives in hands at the rough, deadly timbre of his voice. They were not expecting that. Jack woke up first, Anna still stuck on his last words with a confusion she couldn't understand.

"That knife will serve you no better than the mutiny you devised," Blackbeard said flatly. Jack paused, waiting for Anna to stand closer to him before he spoke again.

"Mutiny served me well. It gained me an audience with you," Jack reminded, and he hoped Anna knew what he was thinking, prayed that she was still with him. That she would always be right with him, that this wouldn't be their slip up, their mistake.

"Oh?" Blackbeard asked curiously.

Anna slammed her knife down on the table, laying the blade flat, her fingers drawing away almost reluctantly. "To warn you," she whispered, the peace her voice carried a stark contradiction to her movements. "Regarding your…superb First Mate, who pretends to be persons she is not."

"Do tell," Teach growled.

"She is not your daughter," Jack answered irrefutably, conviction coloring his words. Shock passed over the Captain's features for the first time since he walked from his cabin doors. Silence engulfed them for a moment, the light wavering dangerously with the quick intake of breath from Edward, the candle flickering, wavering.

"You dare to speak thusly of my flesh and blood?" Blackbeard demanded, anger, rage, and something remarkably like hurt tearing through his voice. Anna stepped back slightly, her eyes wandering the scattered collection of treasures, most appearing to be good luck charms, trying to ward off his inevitable death. She let her fingers draw over them, catching worry stones and mystic amulets that took her back to Calypso's hut when a Tia murmured over bones and watched the patterns they made.

"Sir. The woman is consummate in the art of deception. I know. As I mostly unwittingly set her on the wicked path," Jack related in a devastated voice and Anna was left wondering how close he got, how far Jack fell into the Spanish beauty. She wondered if her reappearance would upset their already precarious balance. With her emotions still scattered from Will's loss and the war and her father and her past coming up to take her under, she was a wreck and she knew it. Jack was supposed to be the stable one, if that made any sense. "Though I cannot claim credit for her existing abundance in natural talent," Jack added with a conspiring look that left Anna grinning. He was an actor, if nothing else, and she couldn't really doubt him. Not when he turned those endless eyes on hers with a quick glance her way.

Blackbeard shifted, rolling a thread-bare doll over in his hands, a contemplative look in his eyes. "Angelica. My beloved daughter, the one true good thing I have done in this life and you claim to be the one who corrupted her?" he asked, feigning calm and Jack was smart enough to know when he was in trouble. Another flick in her direction and he was sure that Anna wasn't paying attention. She was browsing parchment now, reading correspondence with quick eyes, gather as much information as she could.

"Sir. What she is, is pure evil. More to be feared than a wild beast. _Hungry _wild beast, with gnashing teeth! Vengeful, hungry, from hell, beast," he was rambling and he knew it and he would have kept going, a panicked attempt to cover his slip of information. His stumbling attempts to clean up his mess were cut off as Angelica barged into the room.

"Father!" she called, clearly having listened in. Her eyes were wide, doe-like and innocent and Anna didn't believe it for a moment.

"Sweetness!" Jack called excitedly, a glass grin set over his face and Anna could see through it, could sense it was ready to shatter.

Jack's body froze, his mouth opening in a kind of anguish she could feel from even that distance. She turned, dropping the letter about his greatest enemy, and reached for a weapon, anything she could find. She collapsed a moment later, a twisting agony gripping her spine and twisting. She twitched, her body trying to deal with the pain against her will.

Jack couldn't move to help her, couldn't do anything, when his body was seized in an electric shock of pain that held him perfectly still. Something twisted and he fell to his knees, his body crumpling to the floor only feet from Anna's. His head turned slowly, rapt on Blackbeard's contemplative look as he spun a knife into the back of a voodoo doll dressed as him, down to the bandanna. Another, smaller doll with blue ink splotches for eyes and a curly mop of brown hair lay face down on the desk, another knife pressed into the back.

"No need to hurt them. They will help us, won't you both?" Angelica asked dangerously, leaning in close to Jack's face. Her eyes were quick, smart, and Jack had taught her too well and he knew it. He couldn't speak, even if he wanted to.

"You see? Even now, she attends to your welfare," Blackbeard said contemplatively, as he pulled the knife from the voodoo doll's back and allowed the man to stand. As soon as Jack hauled himself up, reaching an arm out to Anna, Teach pressed the knife into the doll's chest, carving out a symbol. Sparrow refused to show the pain until Anna stood next to him, dropping her hand like it was burning and ripping open his shirt. "Giving lie to the claims you make of her."

The Devil's pitchfork was bleeding over his tan skin, only a breath away from the two bullet wounds he sported. Blood tracked its way down his chest and Anna watched it with mounting horror, her back still singing with pain.

"You _will _lead us to the Fountain," Angelica sneered, her upper lip drawing back dangerously. Neither of them responded, vicious glares their only way to fight back. They were stuck and all they could do was bide their time. They couldn't move now.

"Put another way. If I do not make it to the Fountain in time..." Blackbeard warned, holding Jack's voodoo doll over the burning candle until the smell of burning hair filled the cabin and all Jack could hear was the crackle of a flame against his head. He cradled his head between his head, trying to hold himself together when he felt like he was going to explode. Everything hurt and Anna could only watch in horror. "neither will you."

"We will have a wee look-see at those charts straightaway then, shall we?" Anna asked with a shaky grin, placing a soft hand on Jack's shoulder as he clutched his head. Blackbeard grinned, something dark that struck an unwilling fear deep into her soul.

Moments later, when they were beneath the blanket of night and finally, blissfully alone, Anna drew her fingers over his chest, lightly brushing against his new cuts. He hissed and she frowned, her eyes crumpled in sadness.

"Birdie, you are far too fragile," she said, attempting a grin but she meant it. Sometimes she liked to believe he was invincible. He rolled his eyes and brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. His smile was soft, genuine, and she could see something beyond just the pirate, just the front. The pain he felt went deeper and the loss of the Cook, the innocent man they unwittingly condemned. He felt what others assumed he couldn't, he was deeper than just the grin, the sword, the smirk. He was real and he was breakable. And that was frightening to her.

"The best of men feel pain, it's how we remember we are still among the living."


	16. Chapter 16

**Hey! So this is the scene I wrote for SingerDreamer42 who guessed my lovely plot twist, so I really really hope you like it. I wish I could have made this longer, but any more and it would have been overdone and combining it with another scene would have made it too long. Thank you so much for all the feedback, fav lists and alerts, they mean so much to me. Every single time I get a notification, my day gets better. It really does. Thanks again guys, please keep it up!**

** -Han **

"I find it endlessly beautiful," she whispered, leaning back in the small, cramped space in order to see the sky better. He didn't need to ask, he already knew. "The stars are so unconcerned with what happens below them. They simply continue to be." He watched her lips move with careful attention, catching the soft sigh she let escape them. The crow's nest was small, but they managed to fit, knees pulled up to their chests and shoulders brushing in a whisper of touch.

Her brown hair spilled over her shoulders, a slightly breeze picking it up with the breath of the ocean. She inhaled, her body rising and falling with the action, and allowed her blue eyes to shift from the blanket of night overhead to meet his.

Jack stared back at her, warm gaze that left a physical touch, a burn she loved. He wondered if he should respond; the silence seemed sacred. She dared to smile, just the glimpse of one on the edge of her mouth, a quick twitch of the corner of her lips. He returned it, moving slowly, carefully, giving her time to turn away.

She didn't.

Anna's breath caught in her chest, not daring to move an inch as his rough hand cupped her neck, calluses and ocean-worn skin pressing against her. His smile grew as she leaned into the touch, almost unconsciously, her eyes drifting back up to the sky. The darkness made her eyes seem to glow, ethereal and bright. The blue reminded him of sailing on the Caribbean for the first time when he was younger, how quickly he fell in love with the crystal waters and how much he wanted to be back. She took him there, mind and heart and soul vaulting to the sea he loved, the woman he loved. The one he didn't want to lose.

"But we, concerned with them, burn out so brightly," he said finally, his voice a rough whisper on the slight breeze. He drew his hand away, sandpaper against silk. Anna looked back at him, that spark of eternal awe still shining, her attentions refocused. She turned as easily as she could, facing him in the small, cramped space. He let her.

"The more reason to memorize the flames," she murmured. Nimble fingers whispered across his collar bone, her touch sending sparks along nerves and he was alight. Her hands glided over his neck, his eyes falling closed in content, in ecstasy. Just the tips of her fingers moved up to glide along his jaw, shift up to feel the sharpness of his cheek bone, trace the sleepy bruises beneath his eyes, the ridge of his nose broken more than once, the little 'x' shaped cut beside his eye. Her thumb brushed his lower lip. Time stopped.

She leaned in.

He couldn't remember a time when she'd kissed him first and he savored it, drinking in every sensation as if it was the first time, the pressure of her lips on his was something more than beautiful. It was stunning in a way the stars couldn't compete with. He kissed her back, drawing out the touch like it would be their last, his fingers weaving into her hair, her hand cupping his jaw, her thumb making small circles on his cheek.

Fire roared in her chest, her movements turning almost frantic, a need to be close raging through her body. He cradled her in his lap, his other arm wrapped securely around her back, refusing to let go. The gentle lull of the ship felt unsteady, rocked by a storm though the waters were calm and the sky was clear. The breeze was gentle but it felt numbing. Kisses turned rough, drew frantic gasps from her chest as emotion spilled out.

Every hesitation, every moment of confusions and desperation rolled into a moment of peace and they were prisoners, wings clipped and bound and little dolls held down with a knife to keep them in place. She didn't feel real, distanced from everything when her movements were automatic and something in her was _afraid._

Because they might not make it back, the last unbroken thing in her life, the good piece of her left behind by years of wear and violence could be ripped from her fingers. She needed to feel alive. The crow's nest was cramped but it didn't matter, the stars overhead were silent.

Their lips crashed together in a feverish attempt to reach reality and heaven all at once, the need to be _here_ when they were stuck in cages. The need to find a moment, to get away. For a moment, one unrepeatable moment, they were a clash of lips and tongues and teeth and the soft way he bit her bottom lip had her writhing in his arms and breath seemed far away and she swore she heard music, such beautiful music.

When they broke apart, foreheads pressed together and chests heaving in the attempt to draw in salty air, she smiled, kissed him again, again, again. Each touch of her lips on his was endless, moments mashed together and strung out over the ocean and nothing was real and everything was alive.

"Maybe more than just a flame," Jack whispered hoarsely, a chuckle working its way through his chest. "I'd say an inferno, brighter than the fires of Hell." She smiled, pressing another kiss to his cheek, relishing the closeness.

"What are we to do but embrace it?" Anna questioned wryly, flicking her gaze to his endless brown eyes.

"Nothing," he murmured. More sparks, more fire engulfing their senses and drawing them closer to an inevitable brink of sensation, somewhere in their chests, voices screamed for the other. Hearts aching to be closer. The beats pounded out a steady rhythm, souls begging to feel every facet of pain and desire, mixed into one, mixed into everything.

Eyes closed and hands shaking, she slid fingers down his neck, gripping, drawing sounds from him that she would replay in her head until her last breath. She needed to breathe. She broke away again and he trailed fire down her neck. Eyes closed, lips open in a silent explanation of ecstasy.

"You're going to kill me, Jack," she whispered, and her voice was almost lost in a sigh that nearly resembled a moan. Her voice was music, breathy pants a symphony to him.

"A marvelous way to go," he murmured against her skin. She grinned, flicking her eyes to the sky above them with elation burning through her body, happiness she could never explain, he was her addiction.

"Undeniably," she answered softly. "To leave in a blaze is more memorable than being blown out." A beat of pause passed, silence engulfing them amidst the faint orders of the Quartermaster below them.

"We don't have to leave," Jack whispered finally, mouth pressed against her neck. She shivered, unwillingly finding herself falling, drowning in the possibility, the notion that she wouldn't have to lose him. That she could stay next to Jack forever.

"_Jack_," she whispered, and he could barely hear her. His name was only a sigh, desire she couldn't voice, fear and need warring in her body. Death was courting, piracy couldn't keep both of them safe and inevitably someone would get hurt. She was already worn on the edges and one day she wouldn't be able to get back up. "We _can't. _Not like this."

He didn't speak, his back pressed into the walls of the crow's nest, a soft breeze playing over his face and his mind on blood, wounds, red coating his hands that left her white, drained, empty. One day she wouldn't get back up.

"Jack," she said again, stronger now, reverberating through her head. "The Fountain isn't the way. You know what we'd lose." Her voice was insistent, nearly begging and she felt fragile, like one word could rip her apart.

"What's the loss of someone like Blackbeard on my conscience?" Jack asked stubbornly, looking away from her into the darkness. She shifted, clambering off of his lap until she was seated next to him again, her knees drawn up to her chest.

She didn't speak for a moment and maybe she didn't have anything to say. He took to listening to her breathe, the gentle flow of air in and out, in and out. When she finally spoke it was removed, distant. "The Fountain will test us, and Jack? That is not the way to pass." She swallowed, her eyes burning in the darkness, drawing his gaze back. "The value of human light must _always_ be more than that of our own fear of Death. There isn't any other way."

He knew she was right. Jack slid his hand across her ribs, pressing down enough to draw a strained wince from her, the touch sending sparks of pain along her healing bones. "I value _your _life." That was only a reluctant whisper on the wind, barely there and stuck in her head and she'd never forget that.

"Then don't make me live forever knowing I've stolen the breath from another man," she murmured, trying to read his carefully blank expression. His eyes betrayed him and they were endless, so black they could reflect starlight and they shone in a way she couldn't describe, like moonlight on the rippling sea. "And I won't take a _sip_ knowing you won't be flooded with your own youth, but we cannot keep looking for reasons. There are other ways."

"Then are we to sit back and let Blackbeard take it?" Jack asked with desperation lined in his features, the mask shattering around him on the floor. His hand moved from her ribs to cup her cheek, rough on smooth, callused on soft. Real.

"We are to do as we have always done," Anna whispered, memories of adventures others could never know the way she did, rushed through her mind. "What we think is right, what we know is right."

"I don't like it," he hissed, flicking his eyes down the floor of the crow's nest, studying the grains of wood. Anna chuckled, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to find comfort like they had only moments ago and things could change so easily, a stolen moment turned harsh and sad.

"But could you live with yourself?" she asked, an eyebrow raised in question. He shrugged.

"I think I could, yes," he said with a charming grin and it was only fake on the edges, only blank to her eyes. She shook her head, a reluctant smile rising to her lips. When he wrapped his arm around her, she leaned into him on instinct more than anything. She would always lean into him, she hoped he knew that. "I think the more pressing question, Annie, is when we will have to join our fellow mutineers?"

"When the world becomes brighter," she whispered, and Jack knew she wasn't talking about the rising sun. The darkness that surrounded them surpassed the night, invading the cracks of the ship and bleeding into the sailors. There was no way out and they were trapped.

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then I could go a few rounds with Angelica to cheer myself up," she said lightly, a grin sparking something in her eyes. Jack raised an eyebrow, pursing his lips in thought. Memories of nights in Spain, skin-deep passion shared between writhing bodies passed through his mind and he was surprised that he didn't miss it. He didn't miss anything about Angelica.

"Are you jealous, dearest Annie?" he questioned with a grin, dispelling the feel of a different body against his own. The one resting beside him sent sparks up and down his body, made him fly.

"I just don't trust her, something about her story seemed wrong," Anna muttered, almost to herself. "She's a good liar, the worst kind of liar there is, and I don't believe a word she says." Her eyes were tracing the stars again, anything to keep her mind off of the life below them. She'd dragged Jack up here to escape it in the first place, tugging insistently on his shirt sleeve while worriedly eyeing the pitchfork Blackbeard had carved into his chest.

"By your logic, she _is _Blackbeard's daughter and the lies she told us were not lies?" Jack asked with a smirk, testing the waters around him as she shifted, shrugging as she focused her attention once again on his cut. She's already cleaned it as best as she could with half a flask of rum and a piece of cloth that looked relatively clean, but it lay open to the air, near the bullet wounds he'd harbored for most of his life. Her fingers traced the scars, avoiding the edges of the new slices in his skin.

"I wouldn't be surprised," she said softly, but her mind was distant. She wanted to be away, the ship below them only a memory and she and Jack could speak of softer things, happy things. She wanted Jack.

"Are you surprised by anything?" Jack asked, and it drew out a stillness in her body that let him know she was thinking. A moment later and her hand flattened against his chest, feeling the scars and the heartbeats.

"Yes," she whispered softly, her eyes slipping closed. "I'm surprised you're still with me."

Jack didn't know what to say to that. But he had to say something.

"You're so different under the stars," he whispered. Vulnerability seemed to be a night habit, something she could only show when no one else could see her and the dark was comforting, the night shieling, the world couldn't see her weak. "Beautiful," he added when her eyes dropped.

"In the dark, you control who sees you," she whispered, leaning against him, into the loose hold of his arm around her shoulder. Jack kissed the top of her head, the fire and ferocity with which he'd kissed her earlier had fled, drained away on the waves and currents of breeze. The world wouldn't let them escape forever.

He could tell her anything, beautiful lines, recited poetry. He could tell her that he loved her and it would be true, that he needed her, wanted her. Jack could say anything, but his words were chosen carefully. He couldn't encompass the complexity, the intricacies of a pirate who valued the lives of others, who carried confidence and vulnerability, who trusted him and thought herself less than him. The pirate who loved him but rarely said it because she _knew. _She knew better than anyone that words did not encompass them and saying it made it seem smaller.

"I see you." The night was dark around them as he pulled her to his chest, resting his chin on the top of her head. He started counting stars, wondering if they knew of their existence, wondering if they cared as much as he did. Another kiss to her forehead, hoping to communicate what words could never really say. "I see you."


	17. Chapter 17

**Okay, so I was a bit disappointed in the response from last chapter, but I am so thankful for the reviews I did get. I'm going to be really busy studying for my very first AP test this Thursday, so I figured I'd take the only time I have, a short break from my frantic studying, to write another chapter. I would really appreciate reviews, they'd keep my spirits up this week, and keep me sane.  
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** -Han**

Climbing back down to the deck was like leaving behind another life, secret memories and moments only they could see, only they could share. The rigging scratched against the palms of their hands and they wished they felt skin instead of the fraying rope, felt the soft cloth of the other between their fingers as they scrambled for warmth and touch and feel. Boots touched the deck softly, and the last imprints of their time slipped away, they kept their distance from each other, close in only the mind when they wished they could be back above, where Jack drew stuttering breaths from her chest and Anna made shivers roll down his spine.

The deck was nearly empty, darkness blanketing the only sailors moving until they were a part of the shadows, working in another realm, another world. Where lamplight flickered, pools of reality were created, where bits of rope and deck were illuminated in a warm glow that made Jack's skin seem to glow. Anna swallowed, trying to shake off the need to be close to him, turn it off like they were supposed to under the eyes of their enemies. But when he raised his hand to brush along her cheek, she leaned into it.

"We should-" she paused, having nothing else to say when he could feel her gaze on her, hot and scorching and so real. Silence engulfed them again and she could hear the ocean clearer here, it was closer and consuming and it lulled her into security.

"Should be gathering information from Angelica," Jack finished, a small smile stretching his lips in the half-light. His hand fell away, she blinked her eyes open. "Do you trust me?" he asked softly, and the sound of his voice made her wake up, the dream of a continuation of their stolen moments shattering around her. They were at war, captured on enemy territory with no way out and battles approaching.

"Yes," she answered. "Do what you have to." She felt like she was signing her own destruction, the seduction of a Spanish woman weighing on her chest and she wondered if he would lose himself in the illusion.

"You won't be alone for long," Jack whispered, leaning down until his forehead pressed against hers, forcing her to meet his eyes. "I'll be back." He was gone a moment later and cold air invaded, turning to walk towards the stern of the ship.

"Birdie?" she called, stilling his movements and drawing his gaze back to her. She was cast in half-shadows, her eyes shining through the darkness. When she spoke, a soft smile illuminated his features. "I see you too."

Xx

Angelica was surprisingly easy to break open. Jack whispered together and forever and spoke of drinking from the chalice and leaving Anna behind and suddenly she was moldable clay in his arms. Easy and it made him sick. He'd become tired of easy, of new curves and different lips and a woman at every port ready to answer him. He wanted hard to get and easy to talk to.

"You would really leave her behind?" Angelica whispered, drawing a hand across his neck. Her skin didn't make Jack tingle, didn't make him relish in happiness and soft sighs and moments of beauty. It was just a touch.

"Of course I would," he murmured, a sultry smirk slathered onto his lips and it felt so fake. "And we shall bathe each other in the waters of the Fountain, among other things." He forced himself to chuckle, to smile when he felt sick.

Anna had left a mark on his soul he couldn't erase, the memory of their first meeting imprinted in his mind forever as the beginning of his end, the end of his animosity towards his own heart. The image of her sitting on the edge of a dock, swinging her legs to be closer to the water brought him from the depths of his own lust, the need to sate it and run. He wasn't changed, he was better. Anna had brushed aside his inhibitions, his fear of being tied down. He didn't want to lose that.

"I need the years, Jack," Angelica whispered, drawing him away from his thoughts. "But not for me. For my father."

"You fallen for your own con, love," Jack whispered, flicking his eyes down as he spoke. That name wasn't for Angelica, or any other woman now. It was for the one who crossed the veil for him, who kept her promises, who fought Death itself for his sake. It was for Anna, and using it here, speaking it like he was lusting after another woman, it made his heart burn, his fingers go numb, his soul ache.

Jack wondered if he could ever go back to quick nights in Tortuga, bending a woman to his whim and leaving without the weight of guilt on his heart. He wondered if he wanted to. Back then pieces of him were missing, chips off his soul that had been lost to waves and tides years before when his innocence was ripped from him. Then, he'd seen devotion, unconditional love and the need to keep a promise. She came for him, and for him alone.

Had he ever said thank you?

He should.

"Blackbeard is my father. The lies I told you were not lies," she admitted. Jack grinned, real this time, falling back into that stolen moment above his head when Anna whispered theories in the dark.

"By God, she was right," he whispered, rubbing his jaw distractedly. He froze a moment later, wondering how he could talk himself out of his stumble, the slip of the tongue that made Angelica's eyes turn hard, her lips press into a thin line.

Not good.

"Jack," Angelica said in warning, a fire burning in her dark eyes and Jack was struck by the sudden realization that the look didn't stir anything in his chest. She seemed worn, strung out and empty on the inside, in need of years more than her father, barren and unappealing to his eyes. Jack didn't want her, nothing in him did.

His mouth opened, trying to find the words to cover his mistake, to fix his con before it shattered, and the pieces of his lies were scattered on the deck, spilling into the water. His brow crumpled in earnest, in his attempt to add another layer to his lies, webs of half-truths and Aces held behind his back.

Angelica was reaching for her knife, a little doll in her free hand and it had his braids, his bandanna. He swallowed, eyes moving frantically for a way out as the blade caught the star light and glowed a soft silver. His chest ached, he breathed in, his mind rushing ahead to half-cocked plans and possibilities and routes where he didn't get killed.

Xx

"You look like you're waiting for judgment day," a soft voice commented, reaching Anna's ears with the lethargic pull of the sea, calm and easy, water slipping through fingers. She looked up, blinking as the missionary came into view, soft aqua eyes that reminded her of the Caribbean, burning through the night.

"Just for my partner to return from the grasp of the First Mate," she answered nonchalantly. "Annie," she said in greeting, smiling slightly. Her eyes found the water again as the young man came to stand beside her, resting his forearms on the railing and gazing at the stars.

"Phillip." He reached out his hand to grip hers in a firm shake. Silence consumed them for a moment as he drew his hand away and let it drop back to the railing. "He loves you," he spoke with conviction, the kind only missionaries seem to carry and it makes your soul waver, want to agree on impulse. She looked up, smiling softly, reluctantly.

"I'd like to think so," she said quietly, and it seemed to take a moment to reach him fully. He turned to face her fully, his left arm bracing on the railing and his brow crumpled in confusion, analyzing her with a fascination she was unaccustomed to.

"But you don't?" Phillip asked, his eyes widening in bewilderment. She shook her head, strands of hair falling in her eyes and shadows playing across her face with the movement.

"Jack is a pirate, you yourself speak of them as immoral. What am I to think on nights like these?" she asked almost rhetorically, wondering why she was voicing her deepest doubts to this young missionary when she'd barely formed them herself. She'd kept the emotions locked away so tightly she barely knew they existed but this man's conviction could draw it out of her chest, her soul.

"That doesn't mean they cannot love, or find God," he answered quietly, that same soul-deep conviction in his voice that made her question her own preconceived notions about the existence of a true God, a one God. But she knew realities, she knew of heathen Gods who had saved her lives, ones she had fought with all her strength, ones she had seen, knew to be real.

"I've met many Gods, but never yours," she said strongly, flicking her eyes up to his, meeting his assured faith with her own. He seemed surprised, a stumbled half-step back and his mouth dropping open, no sound escaping his lips. He swallowed, shook his head, drew himself back from that place inside his heart that belonged to sea legends and waves, to pagan gods and myth. To the ocean.

"The point of Him is faith, you do not need to see Him to know He is there," he said, unsure who he was convincing, her or himself.

"And I am to disregard the Gods I know, the ones that have saved my life, the ones I've fought for?" Anna spoke softly, but there was a depth there, an endless affirmation of her beliefs, her understanding of the world around her boiled down to the sun and the moon and the sea and the stars.

"In order to reach heaven, yes," Phillip said almost unwillingly, his right hand falling to the bible kept by his side, its thick leather had been his companion since he was young and he stumbled through London amidst shots and screams and the need to be good, different.

"Who said I deserved heaven?" she asked, her eyes on the waves again, watching their entrancing movements against the ship, lapping at the hull as they reflected starlight and the moon, hanging in the night's sky like a hole to another world, where gods crawled into their reality.

"You have saved more than you have harmed. You feel for those lost, you have put yourself in harm's way for others, you've lived for others, you've rejected your crown for the safety of a pirate boy," Phillip said earnestly, stepping forward until his hand rested on her forearm, his eyes insistent and his posture yearning, needing for her to understand.

"How do you know that isn't just a legend?" she asked, lifting her gaze from the water with carefully blank eyes, the blue wiped clean of passion and life.

"Because I-"

Xx

"_Whitecap Bay ahead!"_

The shout from the Quartermaster made Jack and Angelica freeze, an instant held between enemies before a dagger slid back into her waistband and he ran towards the stern of the ship where the moon glittered off the water and a lighthouse stood like a monument to gods. Bells rang out, pounding their shrill tone into his head, bouncing off the walls of his mind until his movements were automatic, his eyes scanning the flurry of movement on deck for long brown hair and blue eyes.

Jack locked eyes with her a moment later, water separating them as she gazed back at the ship with removed interest while Gunner rowed their small longboat towards the shore. He sent her an encouraging smile, one she return halfheartedly, flicking her eyes back to the undead man in a glare, hating him for pushing her into the boat. She'd wanted to wait for Jack.

He dropped into his own longboat, stiffening when Blackbeard and Angelica boarded beside him a moment later and keeping his eyes carefully on the dark shore ahead of them as they made the slow journey to the dock. A thick jungle blanketed the distance, webs of vines and tress tangling themselves within the Florida inlands called to him; the Fountain lay within them.

His steps on the dock were almost shaky, his mind taken up in thoughts of immortality and the notion of right and wrong, the crossroads of his future.

"Lay 'em out flat! No tangles! Make 'em look...pretty for our dainty guests," Blackbeard instructed the quick-handed crew, each sailor stumbling over themselves to make up for the mutiny, to save their fragile skins from the layers of stitches and the numb look of the zombies. "We're going to need light. A lot of light," Teach said to Angelica with a flickering light in his eyes, a plan carefully laid out and accelerating fast.

Jack allowed himself to be herded towards the lighthouse, flicking his eyes to the forest again. Anna had been right, the Fountain wasn't the way to gain the security he desired, to escape the hands of Death he had faced before. He hadn't liked it. But the Fountain wasn't the way.

Jack couldn't let go. A winding staircase led him up and up and up as he convinced himself he could make it out, conscience unscathed if he took a sip from the chalice of Ponce de Leon. And Anna would be beside him forever, he wouldn't have to worry about her bruises or cuts or the way she flinched away from touch.

Had her boat reached land yet? He hadn't seen her on the docks.

"Smell that? Whale oil. Stuff burns like a miracle from God," Salaman commented heartily as he gazed at the intricate looking lighthouse, the fuel source resting in an iron basin that reminded him of witches in South Africa, cannibals in Polynesia, basins used to cook still screaming victims. It was ready to be set alight and concentrated in a huge magnifying glass, centered on whatever point they should choose. Jack turned around himself, flicking his dark eyes from face to face in an attempt to find her, his heart beating in his chest, his fingers trembling.

She wasn't there.

"Can you make it work?" Blackbeard asked, his hard eyes concentrated on the torch the sailor held, watching the flames lick away at the air.

"Made by the English!" he said enthusiastically, before his shoulders dropped and his smile slipped from his dirty face. "Let's not get our hopes up."

Jack rested against the wall, the right side of his face pressed against the cold stone as he stared through the window at the black water, his body shaking, palms sweaty, arms heavy. He knew why they were here, had studied that ever turning map for months long enough to know the shape of a mermaids tale and the story behind their ferocity, their hunger for man. They were hunting tears to mix with a single chalice, the one that would give youth, and the mermaids were hunting humans.

The basin caught behind him, a wave of heat bathing his back as light concentrated on the murky water below them, scanning the lapping waves for a single bobbing boat. Jack breathed, raggedly drawing air into his chest and praying that when light hit, he wouldn't find her face.

But he did.

Xx

Anna glared up at the blinding yellow light, the focused light made her think of Gods, divinity concentrate resting on their packed longboat. She tried to steady her heartbeats, forcing her mind to soothe itself as thoughts of mermaids and teeth and talons tore through her senses, made her body stutter, her heart waver. They were the bait.

She knew that.

"We're doomed. They be drawn to man-made light," Ezekiel muttered, his hands trembling in his lap as his eyes ran over the black waves.

"Sharks?" the Cabin Boy asked fearfully, wide eyes seeking Anna's guidance. She swallowed, shaking her head slowly, unwillingly, wishing she didn't have to divulge the truth.

"Mermaids," she said softly, unable to keep eye contact with the uncontained innocence and fear burning in the little boy's eyes. "Foul beasts, ready to eat any man unwittingly entranced by their beauty."

Scrum swallowed, his gaze switching between the water, the woman, and Gunner, looking for a way out. Anna turned almost imperceptibly towards Phillip and the Cabin Boy, leaning in and whispering quick instructions she hoped they understood.

"You have to go now," Anna hissed, directing her attention towards the small boy. "Slip into the water and swim for land before they arrive. It's the only way you'll make it."

"What about you?" he asked, his voice high in panic. She smiled, switching her gaze to a calm looking Phillip.

"Phillip's God will protect us," she said with a wry smile, patting the boy's shoulder with a soft hand. He smiled back unsteadily, his little hands shaking as he stood at the back of the small ship when Gunner turned his head.

Ripples of water spread from his legs as he dipped his body slowly into the water, relying on Anna's strong grip as she lowered him soundlessly beneath the waves. A quick flash of panic consumed his face as the cold water rose to his chest, but she quelled it with a calming look.

"It'll be fine, just head for the rocks to your right. I'll find you soon," she murmured, resting a hand on his cheek for a moment. He nodded and she withdrew her hands, allowing him to swim as quietly as he could towards the opposite bank. Anna glanced up at the lighthouse, against the glare of light, aware of Blackbeard's hard gaze on them. He would have seen.

She didn't care.

Gunner turned towards them, a pistol raised and ready to dispatch anyone trying to escape, his eyes vicious and cold. Anna raised her eyes to him and tapped Scrum on the shoulder, willing him to mimic her, to distract the zombie from the little boy swimming earnestly towards the shore.

"_My name it is Maria, a merchant's daughter fair_," she sang quietly, her slightly off-key voice rebounding off the water around them, distracting the ferocious look of the undead sailor as they called to the mermaids, pulled them closer to the boat across the tides and swells of waves. Scrum caught on, following her lead in a shanty they all knew by heart.

"_And I have left my parents and three thousand pounds a year,_" They sang together, gaining volume in the small circle of illuminated night. _"My heart is pierced by Cupid." _They nodded urgently to the others, their voices wavering. "_I disdain all glittering gold."_

Sailors crammed together in a small bobbing boat intertwined their voices on waters turned blue by concentrated firelight. A little boy swam towards the shore, a woman sat next to a missionary, emptying her lungs in an off-pitch song she hoped would call the mythical predators towards them. She wondered if she would survive long enough to see the end of this adventure, if she would feel Death close on her quick and fast and see her brother again as she crossed the veil into a new world. She wondered if she would see Jack again.

A quick look at the nervous missionary solidified her conviction. She was a pirate, and now mere-creature could rip life from her fingers after she'd survived so much. She would make it, and so would the aqua-eyed man next to her. Anna would make it back to shore, to Jack. She had to.

_ "There is nothing that can console me but my jolly sailor bold."_


	18. Chapter 18

**Two in one week? WHAAAAAAA? What's going on? What's happening? **_**What does it mean?**_** That's right guys, brings back memories of the old days of two months ago when school wasn't so mean to me. Please review, I'm almost begging. You don't want me to beg, it's just not pretty.**

**-Han**

_"My heart is pierced by Cupid...I disdain...all glittering gold...there is nothing that can console me…but my jolly sailor bold_," Scrum sang lethargically, his upper body slumped over the side of the boat, his hand dangling just above the still water. His fingertips just brushed the smooth surface.

The boy had long reached shore, stumbling slowly towards the lighthouse and collapsing outside of it until the others reached shore. The longboat drifted lethargically in its pool of light, the sailors losing the wired anxiety slowly, draining them until finally, eyes closed and breathing evened and sleep overcame them. It was peaceful.

Anna jerked awake with her head buzzing with sea shanties and rippling water on the right side of the boat, her chest heaving in an attempt to calm herself. She turned, scanning the water with frantic, panicked eyes. Her jarring movements made heartbeats pound faster, fingers twitch, eyes bounce of still water to find the disturbance. Phillip leaned over the edge, following the delicate disruption of water only feet from the longboat.

He sighed as the water lay flat again, shifting back into his cramped seat and resigning himself to another long wait under the cloudless sky. The moon hung above them indifferently, its white glow ever continuous and changing, ready to move through the phases whether or not people moved below it. When he thought like that, something in his chest felt empty, and he remembered the call of the tides and the waves and the sea and the days he spent trying to prove his worth to beings that didn't care. His first Captain hadn't cared about a lowly Cabin Boy and neither did the moon. But God did.

The Church had been his constant since he screamed sanctuary until his lungs burned, since he threw himself before a shocked priest and begged forgiveness because a young girl told him too. He'd gotten a bible the same day, the one he still carries, and its leather is worn and soft with the work of his hands. He'd been little, the girl only two or three years older than him, her eyes frantic and her words hurried and she'd carried him to the steps and told him-

His thoughts cut off abruptly, his body seizing at the image of a blonde woman resting on the side of their boat, her arms folded to keep her anchored to the railing. Her hair was slicked back with water, long and soft, trailing down her neck to her chest. Her eyes were blue, impossibly blue and innocent. He leaned forward, wanting to be closer as she stared, unblinkingly at the sailors before her. A hand on his shoulder had him pulling back, glancing at Anna's stoic face, empty eyes.

"Lord save me!" Scrum muttered, smiling broadly at the sight of the woman. Water stirred around her, an elegant tail shimmered just below the waves, scales catching the concentrated light trained on them. Men turned, gazes hovering between interest and fear, heartbeats loud enough to hear in the empty silence of lapping water and stuttered breathing.

Ezekiel drew a knife, his weathered hand gripping the hilt with more strength than Anna had thought he had, and tried to move through the throng of sailors crowded in the small space. The mermaid gasped, her eyes suddenly wider, blown with fear and anxiety. She pushed from the boat, her tail flicking gracefully below the water until she was a safe distance away, already beginning to sink below the waves again.

"You're scaring her off, mate," Scrum said indignantly, aimlessly throwing an arm out behind him to stop the older crewman.

"Good riddance," Anna spat, her brow furrowed in discontent and her hands balling in fists at her side. Eyes turned to her, mixing appreciation with dislike until she felt like she could taste the conflict.

"Can you talk?" Scrum asked the mermaid, ignoring her completely and turning back to the graceful woman of the waves. She blinked, drifting back towards the boat with slow movements.

"Yes," she answered with a soft smile, white teeth shining in their pool of light. She rested her thin arms on the edge of the boat again, her tan skin reflecting beads of water until she seemed to shine, a speck of gold among rock, diamond amongst coal.

"You're beautiful," Scrum said adoringly, leaning closer to her as if he couldn't stop his own body. It had turned on him, every cell in him begging to be closer to the mystery, the myth, the perfection of this woman.

"Are you the one who sings?" She asked, eyes only for him. Anna watched the encounter with mounting concern, soft splashes playing the background, they could have been mistake for water lapping against the rocks on shore. She didn't think so.

"Aye," Scrum whispered.

"Are you my jolly sailor bold?" the mermaid asked with her soft, alluring voice. Her accent was proper, the kind you hear confined to stuffy rooms drenched in rich colors and porcelain and silk and beauty.

"That I be." He was unable to pull himself back from her eyes and he was drowning, losing the only pieces of his sanity he had left, slipping from his grasp and into the dark water. He was almost hanging off the boat now, his face level with hers, breathing rum into her fascinated gaze.

"Scrum, comport yourself!" Ezekiel shouted, urging the still-sane men to grab him, fingers digging into his soft flesh and pulling, yanking him from fantasy come true and vaulting him back into his sad, lonely life where the waves were his only companion. He fought, jerking his arms clumsily in an attempt to break free, to feel the water against his skin and the mermaid's hand on his cheek and her lips on his.

"Boys! There ain't much been given to me in my brief, miserable life, there's the truth of it," Scrum intoned, breathing heavily with his head hung. His voice was strained, like he was keeping emotion, years of disappointments mounting on top of each other until he was just a man, someone easily looked over, left behind. He was no one. "But, by God, I'll have it said that Scrum had himself a kiss from a _proper mermaid!_" he screamed and gave a final lurch from their lax hands and tasted freedom.

"_My heart is pierced by Cupid, I disdain all glittering gold_," she sang softly, her voice pulling him back towards her. He mouthed along to the words, the shanty bouncing off the walls of his heart, entrancing him, fascinating him. Anna watched helplessly, scanning the water around her for the safest route. The splashing was growing closer. "_There is nothing can console me but my jolly sailor bold_."

Predators glided through the water as if they were angels of water, Aphrodite of the sea-foam, they moved like music. The dark water was murky, but their quick eyes saw everything, the way the light pooled around their prey was perfection, a beacon, a miracle. Elegant tails pushed their bodies forward, not bothering to rush as they moved lethargically to reach their sibling.

"_Come all, ye pretty fair maids, whoever you may be,_" The blonde mermaid sang sweetly, her blue eyes burning into Scrum until his blood was alive, his soul awakened. He was leaning closer, always closer.

Anna gripped Phillip's shoulder, nodding to the rippling water ahead of them, the slow moving mermaids beginning to corner them. They surfaced slowly, blinking open to the world of above with a keenness that set his nerves on edge. His eyes widened, his fingers reaching for his Bible as if it could prove the protection of his God.

"We wait until the opportune moment," Anna whispered lowly. He could barely hear her voice over the sound of the mermaid's song. "And then you jump towards the shore and you swim for your life. And you don't look back," she pled earnestly, her eyes huge and blue and suffocating.

"_I want you to turn around and run up those steps and into that church. Run for your life. And you don't look back."_

Years disappeared, moments spent ridding himself of his past and his secrets melting away until he was that dirty boy again, kicked to the side by everyone but her. The stand-in mother, frantic sibling, Angel sent to protect. He nodded dumbly, his mouth opening as if to speak, say something important. But just like years before, he had nothing to say. He nodded again, firmer this time, his eyes shifting to map out the safest way towards land.

Phillip didn't ask where she would be, hadn't before, when she took off into the streets of smoke and soldiers to find her way back home. This time her body was tense, shoulders set and jaw clenched. She looked like a pirate.

"_Who love a jolly sailor bold, that ploughs the raging sea." _The mermaid's voice seemed to reverberate through Scrum's very being, drawing him towards her face with a hope in his heart that hadn't been matched since he was little and dreamed of the sea, of fame, fortune._ "My heart is pierced by Cupid, I disdain all glittering gold. There is nothing can console me, but my jolly sailor bold." _Mermaids were everywhere, tails swishing gracefully through the water, but Scrum had eyes for only one. The blonde reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling her body up and his down. "_My heart is pierced by Cupid, I disdain all glittering gold. Nothing can console me…"_

Anna watched Scrum sink lower, lips puckered and eyes beginning to slip closed. She tapped Phillip again, willing him to rise amidst the eerie singing that seemed to seep into their very cores. They turned their backs on the rest of the enraptured crew, facing the shore. Phillip bent to dive, she stood straight.

"What are you-" She cut him off with an imposing look.

"Just don't look back."

"_But my jolly sailor bold_." The blonde pulled Scrums face down with her, water engulfing her eyes, face, lips, so he followed. His eyes opened beneath the water, watched her beautiful face smile at him. He froze, a hiss he could hear beneath the waves infiltrating his very being. She grinned at him again, vicious fangs glinting in the murky half-light. He screamed, the sound was lost in the blanket of water.

"_Now!" _Anna screamed, turning away from the shore to grab an oar and jab down into the mermaid holding Scrum in one fluid movement. The wood connected, the mer-creature jerking back violently, a scream vibrating through the sea with the force to scatter ripples along the surface.

The other mermaids circled like sharks, predators intent on their weak prey, watching the little boat. Phillip swam towards the shore, pausing long enough to breathe heavily, coughing water from his lungs as he attempted to stay afloat. He glanced back, his eyes widening in horror as the sailors bunched together in the center of the boat, standing in a small huddle while the mermaids glided through the water at impossible speeds, baring teeth he could see from his position only a few yards from the rocky beach.

A thin mermaid launched herself from the water, talons reaching out for human flesh. It caught, the sailor was wrenched overboard screaming, terror frozen on his face, his hand outstretched towards Anna. She couldn't reach him in time.

Phillip started swimming back towards the boat, the horrified screams of the crewmen filling his mind and he couldn't just let this happen. Not as a servant of God. His body felt heavy, his limbs moving too slowly through the water as he pushed himself further and further, swearing to himself that he would make it.

The boat flipped, Anna only had enough time to brace her legs on the railing and angle her body into a dive, cutting the water with her body. She opened her eyes beneath the water, watching blood swirl slowly with the rest of the sea, pulling it into exotic patterns and it was so dark. A dead body floated past her face, and she lurched back to avoid it, her face crumpling into terror and disgust and fear.

She forced herself to move, her lungs burning, her heart pumping faster until it was deafening. Anna broke the surface a moment later, sucking in air like it was precious and blinking the salt from her eyes. She was sucked down again, a scream frozen in her throat as water invaded her body, choking her, pulling her down.

She kicked, her boot connecting violently with the mermaid's chin, sending her careening backwards in an elegant flip that could only be accomplished in water. Anna fumbled for the dagger she kept in her boots, the silver glinting softly in the darkness. She was pushed back, talons digging into her shoulders, pushing her last reserves of air from her lungs. She slashed up with her remaining strength, the blade connecting with the creature's abdomen, spilling blood into the water until she couldn't see which way was up. She kicked the body away from her, her arms thrusting her upwards and she prayed it was really upwards.

When she broke the surface she thanked the Gods, coughed, spat, and breathed like air was the gift of eternal life and she wanted to live forever and ever. The stars were calm, ever twinkling, the moon a constant light. The ocean was a sea of white water, bodies thrashing and kicking and striving for life, air, land, anything to save them from their reality.

Anna took a breath and dove towards the thick of the slaughter, her knife ready, slashing at anything with a tail and pulling still-moving sailors away, towards land. The flurry of movement was shifting towards the shore, the dock in sight. She made a break for it, the water making her feel heavy, exhaustion seeping into her bones as she tried to move faster. She was pulled back again, a hoarse shout ripping from her throat before it was drowned out.

The weight was gone. She glanced back to see Phillip struggling to stay up with his body sinking into the water and weary ache settling into every fiber of his being. She glared, swimming towards him until her arm could wrap around his shoulders, heaving him up until he could breathe easily.

"I _said _not to look back!" she hissed, kicking awkwardly amidst the violence and the pain and the fear. Phillip smiled tiredly, trying to help her move.

"It was…my turn," He said tiredly, between huge gasps for air. Small cuts littered his upper arms, his attempts to help the others had left him bleeding and nearly dead. Anna didn't think about his words, what they meant. She just pushed him on, trying to force him to the shore. Their gazes flicked back to the docks, where the sailors waiting on the beach with long nets were being taken under, the dock ripping apart from beneath itself.

"Jack," she whispered, a new surge of energy consuming her body and everything was on fire and everything hurt and she didn't care. She had to go and save Phillip and save everyone else.

"I'm fine from…here," he insisted pulling his arm away from her and shifted on his back to take the last few strokes to the shore. She nodded reluctantly, and turned back, forcing herself onward until the world around her was nothing more than the splash of water around her body and the darkness that consumed her. The dock lay in her sight, beyond that the screaming masses of sailors trying to keep their grip on the lengths of nets She couldn't save them, she had to get to Jack.

That killed her.

Anna was close to giving up by the time she reached the quickly collapsing docks and the pirate at the end of it who refused to move, his eyes scanning the water as if waiting for something. Wood splintered around him, the haunting screams of the mermaids reverberating through the air and the sea of flaying limbs and choked breathes before him. Angelica was behind him on the beach, screaming for him to come in, to run.

"_Jack! Move, please, Jack!"_ Anna shouted, fighting the call of water on her limbs, the seductive darkness that promised her peace. He locked eyes with her as she dragged herself onto the barely-there dock.

"Anna," his voice was a whisper, not quiet there, consumed with nothingness and resignation. "Are you dead?" he asked, standing carefully still as planks of wood were torn from the dock around him by the last vicious mermaids.

"_No!" _she screamed, fighting to stay above water as another venomous creature grabbed her ankle, digging into the leather of her boots. In an instant he was alive again, a sudden jolt of electricity shooting through his body as the reality sunk in.

Waiting above had been torturous, watching her slip into complacency when death was lurking, the way she pushed the boy and the missionary to safety and stayed behind. She always stayed behind. And then there had been the screams and he was running and he couldn't stop and Angelica had to grab him to keep Jack from diving in to save Anna. Because _someone _needed to save her. So he waited and the world was coming apart around him but she had to dead in that. She had to have died.

Nothing mattered, his heart had stopped, the world frozen. He couldn't move.

But now he could. Now she was alive.

He dove to his stomach, splintering wood slamming into his abdomen as he grabbed onto her forearms. Her frantic blue eyes were shining, alive, real. Wet hair hung in her face, her clothes were soaked, her body cold to the touch and she was shaking. He managed to stand and pulled with all the strength he had, every muscle tensing, every nerve screaming to accomplish a single goal.

She kicked violently, sending the shark-ish creature away with a deafening scream of pain. Jack pulled harder, numb fingers digging into her skin in an attempt to hold on, sea water poured form her clothes as she ascended from the grip of the ocean. He helped her stand, helped her run as the last of the dock disintegrated beneath their boots. His hand rested in hers, and it was real.

Xx

Phillip gasped for breath when his body hit the sand, his chest rising and falling violently as he begged for air like it was the Divine. He choked, spitting out salt water until the block in his lungs was removed and the sweet touch of oxygen flooded his body. He blinked his eyes open, staring into a small tidal pool with mounting anxiety, fear pulsing through his body at the sight of the mermaid, her eyes resting just above the water.

His God wasn't going to save him.

Xx

Jack made her run because he had to reach the lighthouse, but her body was tiring quickly, her legs only moving because of his tight hold on her hand. They stuck to the beach, white sand kicking up around them and sticking to her soaking clothes, weighing them down even more. The lighthouse was before them, an endless spiral of stairs she didn't want to see, didn't want to climb.

"Can you make it?" Jack asked breathlessly, his chest already heaving from exertion as she wheezed and nodded numbly, if only to prove herself. Shore was littered with dead bodies, Blackbeard standing just inland and ready to shoot any trying to flee, the others succumbing to the fury of the creatures they hunted.

"Don't have much of a choice," she answered haltingly, her shallow breathing a constant noise to counteract the screams, the blaring sounds of death. He grinned, gold caps shining in the moonlight.

"Glad to have you back," he said lightly, as if the world around them was not falling apart, as if men were not dying and being torn apart for the sake of a cruel Captain with dark eyes. He turned, reaching quickly for a large wooden stick and banging it against a compartment of oil with powerful swings that left Anna's mind racing along lines of plans and the ends of them. She would end where she began, she reasoned, in water. "Though I was expecting to get you here a bit sooner."

"So you could hit me with a stick?" she asked jokingly, watching oil coat the length of the wood and seep into the grain. Jack chuckled, holding it in front of his body like a broadsword meant to lead men into battle.

"No darling, to watch a fireshow."

They took the stairs three at a time, fingers gripping the stone walls for leverage, throwing themselves up and up and up. Anna rolled her eyes, the blue shining and rimmed with red from the salt water. Her right shoulder was bleeding shallowly, her shirt torn in more than one place but she was alive.

At the top she was barely breathing, trying to reach for air and Phillip's God all at once and they were dragging her in opposite directions, the veil closing on half of her while fire burned warmth she could still feel on the other. Jack caught her when she swayed, held her close for a moment not long enough to appreciate and whispered sweet nothings in her ear until she could stand on her own.

"They need us, Annie," he reminded softly, gesturing towards the window where darkness screamed with agony. She nodded and watched Jack step forward, her body beginning to sag with exhaustion, every little piece of her begging for sleep and for safety. The flames powering the lighthouse danced before her eyes, moved and licked and threatened to escape their iron prison. Jack stepped forward, oil drenched stick ready to charge the flames and set off an explosion guaranteed to save the remaining sailors.

They had to do something right, prove to themselves that they weren't as selfish as they felt during stolen moments under the stars and adventures for their sakes. Other beating hearts depended on them.

Jack tossed the wood into the basin of flame, joining Anna quickly at the window, pausing long enough to slip his hand into hers, calluses and scars on scars and calluses. They jumped, the lighthouse exploded behind them.

Xx

A torrent of flame engulfed the sky and Phillip stumbled backwards, sloshing through shallow tidal pools in a frenzied attempt to avoid the falling debris and flames that licked the sky like the breath of dragons from myth. The mermaid attacked, pushing him down into the water and covering his body with hers, her wet hair falling in his eyes, her skin sticking to his.

Warmth spread around them and he didn't know if it was flame or her. It didn't seem to matter. Two loud splashes behind him and the dark-haired mermaid pushed herself off of his firm body, flipping herself around in an attempt to swim in the thin layer of water. Her tail shown in the light, more colors than Phillip had ever seen, blues and greens and pinks dancing before his eyes in a swirl of delicate scales. Her face was pale, nearly white skin that made her seem insubstantial, like she would fade if he tried to touch her.

Full, pouty lips painted a dusky pink were drawn into a thin line of anxiety, worried dark blue eyes scanning the world around her as she tried to pull herself through the shallow water by delicate arms and nimble fingers. Her dark hair lay in long tangled curls around her face, snaking down her body until they provided her decency.

He moved before he knew what he was doing, releasing his sword and plunging it down through the thin flesh of her tail, his body hunching over the weapon and his breathing harsh. Phillip felt the sword in his grasp, heavy and familiar and he hadn't even remembered picking it up but someone must have shoved it at him. Now it was clean through this silent mermaid, a young woman breathing too hard, her eyes blown wide with fear and pain.

He swallowed, their eyes met. His mouth opened, trying to find the words, trying to say anything. Her chest moved violently, like air was hard to come by, like the moments between them were suffocating and slow. He slid the sword from her tail, retracting steel from the wound until it fell limply in the sand. Neither of them moved.

The moment of peace shattered as a net was slung over her, the jerking movements of a trapped mermaid made him sick. She hissed, her back arching and tail flipping violently in an attempt to be free, to feel the soothing touch of water against her skin and the protection of darkness. But the bonds set on her were too strong. Her eyes met the man again, tan skin and sun-bleached hair and the eyes of someone pure.

He was frozen, didn't try to move, didn't try to save her.

Xx

Anna was done saving people.

Her head broke the surface for the infinite time that night, that horrible choking sound of a first breath and the last of her strength draining from her body when she hit the hard water. It felt like stone, like she'd been beaten a thousand times by a thousand different people. Jack had to drag her back to shore.

She hated that.

"I…I'm okay," she spat out around the engulfing water and need to prove herself. Jack didn't even turn his head, the grip on her arm like iron, dragging her towards the shore. The moon and the stars hung overhead, and Anna decided that if Phillip's God was real, he didn't care. Just like the sky didn't care.

They were either alone or rejected. It didn't matter.

They reached the shore together as the remaining sailors picked themselves out of the water and the sand and tried to walk. Blackbeard stood unharmed with a glass coffin and his undead henchmen by his side, his beard still smoking faintly. Anna would kill for that kind of dry warmth. The Cabin Boy stood dutifully beside his cruel Captain, casting Anna a thankful look that she wouldn't forget.

She shivered without meaning to and nearly cried from relief when Jack slung an arm around her shoulder, tucking her into his chest. She could hear his heartbeats.

"Don't leave without me next time," Jack muttered almost bitterly, his brow crumpled in concern and his eyes trained on her pale form. She looked more than half dead, barely moving with the strength it had taken for her to keep coming back, keep saving. Sailors waved to her, smiled, tipped imaginary hats at the both of them and she wished she could summon the strength to smile.

"Don't leave me, please," she whispered, and Jack wondered if she meant now or ever. His grip tightened, wet clothes sticking sloppily to each other, their boots squishing in the sand. They reached Angelica and her father after several moments spent in mourning silence, water lapping suddenly peaceful again. Anna could never hate the ocean.

"Did everyone see what we did there? Because we will _not _be doin' it again," Jack announced loudly, pointing back to the ruins of the lighthouse behind him. The mermaids had fled immediately, turning tail and screaming with their hollow voices, needing to be away from the heat and the sound of crashing rocks, explosions and falling stones.

"He got one!" a sailor shouted joyfully, pointing to a small group of crewmen carting a delicate looking mermaid wrapped and caged and bound in webs of rope. Phillip stumbled in behind them, his sword dragging limply in the sand, his eyes misted over.

"Come, give 'im a hand. Good sailor," Blackbeard praised, gesturing to his zombies to take the load. The dark-haired mermaid was dropped unceremoniously into the glass cage, a coffin to her, a small layer of water blanketing the bottom. She scrambled for escape, her hands pressed against the glass and pushing.

Anna swallowed, turning away with sad eyes.

"No one should have to bear that," she whispered so only Jack could hear her, her voice lost in the sound of wind and the ocean. Jack nodded.

"Freedom is in their veins, as in ours." He paused, watching the silent sailors around them, tired eyes and exhausted limbs and heads tilted down in grief. "She will suffer more now than ever in her life, for the sake of this man's lust."

"Are you suggesting what I think you are?" Anna asked softly, blue eyes reflecting the stars again, red on the edges from the salt but that spark was back. Jack smiled, for a moment forgetting Angelica and Blackbeard and The English and all the people who wanted their services, wanted their lives, wanted them for a piece in the game. His dark eyes left warm imprints on her skin, bringing color back to her cheeks, life to her hesitant smile. She seemed awake again, strung out but pulled back in, barely there but enough. Jack pressed a hand to her neck, if only to be sure she was really there. Her skin was soft, she leaned into it. She always leaned into it.

"No one can win if there isn't a Fountain."


	19. Chapter 19

**Hey All! So there's this terrible thing called finals, that will prevent me from updating next Tuesday, since Tuesday seems to be my regular update day…so I'll try for Sunday or Monday because of the long weekend. Anyway, I really hope you guys like this, it took forever for me to be happy with it, and I finally got to write Groves who is one of my favorite minor characters. Pease don't forget to review!**

** -Han**

Rain poured from an unforgiving sky in a fierce torrent of sharp droplets and cracking thunder, the grey clouds suffocating White Cap Bay until it seemed closed off from the rest of the world. A realm all its own.

A small band of British soldiers, men of the crown, tramped onto once dry land amidst the downpour with squinted eyes and slow steps, following the one legged man who managed to steal the lead. Groves stumbled slightly to catch up with his appointed superior, one he used to know as enemy. The young privateer could recall a time when the powder-caked man wore a torn hat and sea-worn clothes, was tan and bore crevices in his skin made by the waves and by curses Groves believed in, these days.

They were searching for a new curse, one of eternal Youth that kept you breathing past your time, spat in the face of God and demanded a longer stay. He didn't believe in that any more than he believed in the validity of Barbossa's cause. This wasn't for the crown, it couldn't be.

But they were tramping in the wet sand with the intent to return water from a mythical fountain to the steadily aging Prince of England. And those they left behind on the ship had seemed more unsteady than he knew them to be, and they had spoken of White Cap Bay harboring mermaids, beings born of waves and vice that lusted for the taste of man. He hadn't wanted to believe them, but he knew too much of magic not too. He remembered the way pirates turned to bone under blue moonlight, the way monster and human met and had born Davy Jones, the way a maelstrom had sucked the _Flying Dutchman _into the depths of the sea just to spit it back out with a new Captain. Groves had seen men return from the dead, refuse to flinch from a blade, he had seen the mists of reality and imagination cross.

He knew of the unlikely, the untrue.

Barbossa's peg leg squished into something half-hidden amongst the white sand. Groves swallowed back bile, a shaky white hand rising to rub over his jaw.

"Is that…?" He couldn't finish.

"Mermaid," Gibbs confirmed, the older man pushing his way forward, grim eyes set on the already decaying flesh of the hybrid beast. Groves had always had an unwilling respect for the man he knew as companion to Jack Sparrow, the kind of brass loyalty the older man had shown throughout years of chasing and being chased was astounding in the world of piracy, as it was described to him. Through their time on ship together, he had learned more of him, stories that couldn't possibly be real, a fathering soul with quick eyes, light fingers, devotion to the soul of piracy. "Give up this madness now," the older man implored, turning his eyes to a stoic Barbossa.

"I cannot," he responded calmly, turning to the ten or so collected men. "Ever walk on the beach, look back, and see your footsteps in the sand? It's like that, except the footsteps lie before me." Barbossa spoke with a level of contempt Groves didn't remember hearing on their brief previous encounters, back when he flew under a black and bone flag. He figured the wig was what changed him.

"Foot_step, _actually," Gillette muttered to himself, kicking at the sand in frustration. He'd grown tired of chasing after myth and legend and pirates. Unlike Groves, he harbored no secret admiration for the dirty, unkempt ranks of the dammed.

"White Cap Bay, sir," Groves muttered, pointing the dangerously rolling waves, the quick growing swells of foam and danger. "We must hasten!" They needed to get back, to help the other men. Groves' handsome face crumpled, the clean lines and smooth skin marred by his distress.

The screams started then. The mangled cries of the dying crew seemed to infest the air, slaughtering any illusion of beauty within the chaos of the storm. The droplets stung his face, but he turned into the torrent to find the ship. Waves slapped against the side of their vessel, haunting screeches of the mermaids mingled with the screams of men with no way out. They wouldn't make it. The _Providence _pitched, the force of the creatures against the port side was too much.

"We travel by foot!" Barbossa shouted, turning his back to the water. "Gibbs, I require a heading." His voice had turned sickly sweet, colored with authority and the promise of pain on the horizon.

"Sir. The men!" Groves nearly pleaded, his eyes flicking from his commander and the dying.

"They be dead already," Barbossa said unflinchingly, his eyes impossibly hard. No remorse lined his posture, back straight and shoulders set, he was resigned. He had lived through this before.

"They don't _sound _dead," Groves spat, glaring at the older, weather-worn man. His back was straight too, the instant need to save, to stop the screams and the pain. That's what he signed up for, why he had sworn his name in service of a King he didn't know for a country he didn't live in.

Barbossa held a pistol to his head, cocking it with a click that managed to be audible over the sound of rain and the last desperate cries of men. "Oh, is that so? But I hear nothing but seagulls nesting. What is it that you hear, Mr. Groves?" His voice was dangerous, a calm no one could explain that shot shivers down the spines of the few collected men remaining.

"Seagulls. Nesting. Sir," Groves whispered reluctantly, his eyes flicking back to the _Providence _a final time. His mind screamed prayers of salvation he knew God wouldn't listen to. They were lost, the waves their home now.

"Heading, Gibbs?" Barbossa asked, flashing a grin at the older man, exposing decaying teeth and gold caps. Gibbs didn't respond.

The men were turned, watching the ship finally capsize, screams being drowned out as the _Providence _was taken under by the claws of a death too permanent to reverse.

"My God," Groves whispered, as if his voice wasn't allowed to carry, as if God didn't want to hear him. He wondered, if they waited long enough, if they would see a green flash light the sky like he had the day after Beckett was lost among waves and flames.

"Your head, or my heading, I'll have me one or the other, I don't care which," Barbossa hissed, raising his pistol to Gibbs' head, a vicious look in his eyes. Groves wondered if he held the glare in place to avoid the pain of losing a crew. Every Captain felt that, surely.

Silently, Gibbs raised a shaky hand towards the jungle that blanketed the interiors of the island, the mountains that framed the view. They started walking, wet sand sticking to their boots.

They didn't look back.

Xx

Anna slept like gods dreamed, full of magic and ancient spell work and the slow in and out of the tides flowing through her breath. She slept like humans could only wish, removed completely from the rest of the world and pushed into sounds of the ocean and reflections of the stars on the water. She slept like children did, immune to nightmares and memories.

Curled to his side, Jack slid his fingers across her cheek, watching the way her eyes flicked beneath her lids, never resting, ever roaming, at peace. Her lips were curled into a soft smile, an arm slung over his chest and a leg hitched onto his hip. He chuckled to himself, watching her fingers knot into his shirt, her knuckles brushing the tan skin of his chest.

They'd walked back in a trance, half dead and barely moving, dragging their unwilling bodies back to the longboats, loading in with nervous eyes casting over the waves. They reached the ship slowly, hesitant strokes by the crew towards the red and black monolith before them. The _Queen Anne's Revenge _lay untouched in the bay, seeming to shine beneath the full moon, the light of the stars reflecting on the ingrained blood and fear that laced the wood. Teach retreated to his cabin, back into the folds of mystery and fear he commanded so well, with only a sharp glance at the Quartermaster before the doors closed.

When the ship moved of its own volition, grateful sailors collapsed almost where they stood, leaning against the railing or barrels to take a moment away from reality. They slept where they could, as the vessel of nightmares drifted to a protected cove closer to the path they would take the next morning. Once they rested away from vixens of the waves, Jack had tugged her hand until they were below decks, sinking into a thin hammock towards the back. Limbs were splayed over each other and their chests were crushed together in an attempt to retain their precarious balance, the feeling of empty air lulling them into content.

She was asleep before Jack could blink.

Anna sighed in her sleep, sinking even closer to him with the release of breath until every facet of her was against him. He chuckled softly, his fingers splaying out against her cheek until his palm cradled her face.

Soft light filtered through the cracks in the ceiling, reminding him that morning had come and their moments of peace were about to melt away. He'd woken only minutes before, with his arm caging her to his body. He wanted to savor this, to pretend like this adventure wasn't happening for just a few more moments.

Jack didn't want to rediscover the art of death, held above his head like knife-sharp pen of a poet, ready to press into the pages and draw inky blood. He didn't want to face the Fountain and rip it from his own fingers, shatter it completely and go back to living each second fearing the Reaper he's met before.

But Jack wasn't a parasite. Living off of another's stolen years would fill him with an emptiness that would infiltrate his heart with its subtle sting until he was dead on the inside. And he knew that.

Being caught between misery and paradise made his heart clench and he resented gods for not having to make the choice, angels for flying above the pain of life and death in its cyclical agonies, men who had their lights burned out and woke up in someplace better. He had no heaven to look forward too, only the barren lands he knew so well.

Anna shifted in his arms and he glanced down, remembering why he'd made the decision to begin with. He wanted to stay with her, for the right reasons. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this _good_, this wholly put together _good_, and dammit it all, he didn't want to give it up. This time, he wasn't being selfish.

Living day to day in fear of death beside her might be even better than years of assured youth. And this way, neither of them would watch enemies win, sink into the horizon with eternally soft skin and sharp eyes and quick movements. They would destroy the Fountain, one of the last remaining testaments to gods who meddled with fate, and they would live with a peace in their souls no golden chalice could compete with.

If he's ever done anything, it's keep a calm in his heart that mirrors the soft waves lapping on Caribbean shores. Jack smiled to himself, his thumb making lazy circles on Anna's cheek until her body tensed and pulled long in a stretch that ground her into him. She mumbled to herself, her eyes blinking open slowly, hazy blue eyes looked heavy with sleep.

"Jack?" she asked softly, as if expecting him to be gone, as if she'd thought she'd be alone. He grinned, gold caps glimmering in the early morning light. Her eyes flicked down, taking in their tangled position with a growing sharpness. She looked hesitant for a moment, as if she would extract herself from his embrace, unravel their entwined limbs and stand on her own. But she didn't.

"Aye?" he asked, as she sunk back into his arms, a curl of her hair falling over her eyes.

"Are we _really _going to traipse through the jungle with a mermaid in a glass coffin to find a magical Fountain that can restore Blackbeard's youth, or has this all been an extremely elaborate dream?" She asked around a yawn, threading her fingers into Jack's shirt as if to keep him from slipping away.

"I'm afraid this isn't a dream, love," he whispered, grinning softly. She groaned, shifting to sit up, the hammock shaking dangerously with the change in movement.

"So traipsing?" she asked, flicking her gaze to the ceiling and the patterns of light seeping through the cracks like they could help her guess the time. Hardly anyone was below decks with them, everyone having slept where they stood the night before or already working.

Jack craned his body up, grinning as he repositioned her to his lap and brushed his fingers back over her cheek. She still looked careworn, but alive. That seemed more than he could ask for, these days. He threaded his fingers through her hair, tugging her down until he could press a soft, gentle kiss to her forehead. When he pulled back, a soft blush colored her cheeks, and he loved that he could still make blood rise in her skin, after months of kisses and touches and being close. He smiled cheekily, a spark in his dark eyes and answered her with an almost reluctant nod.

"Traipsing."


	20. Chapter 20

**Hey guys, this is very long, or longer than usual. I've been working on this for a while, so I really really hope you like it. And you guys should definitely review, as an early birthday present (the big 1-6 this Saturday), it would be very VERY much appreciated. Thank you so much guys, and enjoy!**

** -Han**

Anna couldn't see anything, but she knew she was traipsing. The jungle was wet beneath her boots, spongy moss and slick leaves blanketing the ground as she stumbled behind Jack, casting her eyes fervently beneath her blindfold, trying to read the mirage of shadows that made up her vision. The firm grip on her arm was numbing, the Quartermaster led her unrelentingly, refusing to slow when her footing slipped precariously on the slippery ground. Jack grumbled something just a head of her, facing the same debilitation, and wishing he could take in the layers of green above them, could see the way sunlight filtered through the trees.

"Is this really necessary?" she asked sullenly, squirming beneath the iron-clad grip on her shoulder. She had no idea where they were, but the terrain beneath her feet had long changed from sand to jungle. They were in the thick of La Florida now, a dozen men around her marching in a straight line towards the Fountain. The leader came to a sharp stop at the top of a hill, Jack a moment later when he crashed into the strong back of Edward Teach.

"Best you not know the exact whereabouts of my ship, I be a cautious man," Blackbeard muttered, glaring back at the two blindfolded pirates. The undead stepped back, hands falling to their sides and Anna's body rejoiced at the return of blood to the parched limb. She rubbed circles into her skin, trying to soothe the onslaught of pins and needles through her nerves and flexing her nimble fingers experimentally.

She removed her blindfold slowly, waiting for someone to stop her as she fingered the tie of the rough cloth. It slipped from her eyes, revealing blue to the rich green surrounding her. Anna blinked back the spattered sunlight that made it through the thick trees overhead, and switched her gaze to Jack. He was facing away from her, his eyes for Teach only, a hand falling to his compass.

"Adverse to popular belief," he said softly, staring back at Blackbeard with carefully blank eyes. "So be I." Jack turned, flicking his compass open with quick fingers as he faced Anna with quiet insistence. She moved almost gracefully across layers of wet ground, her steps well thought-out and planned until she stood at Jack's shoulder.

"But what we want first, is Ponce de Leon's ship," she murmured, watching the needle spin endlessly, wondering if they would be back to the second adventure, where it never stopped and no one really knew what they wanted. That was when freedom had a price and Anna hadn't realized that friendship went deeper.

The black needle paused, a sharp finger of the gods pointed at her chest for a second long enough to breathe before Jack slipped his hand into hers and it spun again. She smiled, proud of herself in some twisted way. She still messed with his bloody compass.

They were moving again before Anna could blink, quick steps with Jack and her leading, swords drawn to cut down the large hands of the jungle bearing down on them, trying to bar their way. She cast her eyes back, pausing a second too long at the sight of a glass coffin between two of the undead. Her brow furrowed as a pale mermaid pressed her hands against the glass, casting frightened eyes around her quickly changing surroundings.

"She looks terrified," she whispered to Jack, turning to face the unmade trail before them. The image of the mermaid, more human looking than ever, pressed against the glass, was burned into her mind. Wide eyes and frantic breathing, her chest stuttering in its constant movements up and down were imprinted in her memory. "This can't be essential."

"Apparently tears do not keep," Jack answered solemnly, his eyes trained on the terrain ahead. "And Blackbeard only has regards for himself." He seemed ashamed by that, disgusted by the very notion that not all pirates carried honor in their hearts and freedom in their veins. Some were taken by a blackness that could never be eradicated from their souls, a contract of malicious intent signed in blood and handed to the devil. Some were evil, and it couldn't be changed. Jack hated that.

"I miss Tia in times like this," Anna said suddenly. "She could fix him with a curse fit to down twenty men." She seemed assured, convinced in every aspect that the voodoo woman could help them. She remembered Tia Dalma as good, lacking the fury she seemed to possess as a Goddess and swelled with the softness of the sea on a calm morning.

"Have you ever thought that you overestimated her compassion?" Jack asked skeptically, brow raised and a smirk flitting around the corners of his mouth. They'd had this conversation before, and the answer was always a quick, soft 'no'.

"She told me about my mother," Anna said instead, moving a limb out of her way and ducking beneath the long reaches of a fern. The edges brushed against her face, painting dew on her cheeks.

"You never told me what she said," Jack noted with a hint of surprise, like he hadn't even noticed. Anna shrugged, changing direction slightly when the compass moved.

"You hadn't asked."

"Well?" Jack asked insistently, flicking his gaze back to the band behind them, Angelica quickly gaining ground. Their conversation would end soon, he knew.

"She told me that my mother is a woman of legend and mist, one who had made many enemies, in England and in her own realm. That her greatest would face death in the coming months while she watched, the eyes of a leader trained on a fallen. That she would face a price if I couldn't stop it. Tia told me that my mother had freedom in her blood and a black flag waving in the wind behind her," Anna recited quietly, steps slowing almost unconsciously as her mind flew back to the deck of the Black Pearl and an impending war crashing down on them, Davy Jones ahead. Tia had become a Goddess, then, changed before her eyes and fallen into the arms of the sea. Anna missed her.

"Unhelpful as usual," Jack muttered, eyes flicking from the compass to her as she moved with purpose. "Why do these things have to be so ambiguously mystical?"

"Because it would be easy," Angelica cut in, announcing her arrival to their conversation with her husky accent. Anna nodded in half-hearted agreement, wondering if she should traipse ahead to let them speak privately. Jack's hard look in her direction kept her shoulder to shoulder with him.

"And you know of difficult?" Jack asked instead, watching as Angelica ran her fingertips over a snake entwined in the vines to their left. They were coming up on water, no other way but through. Anna fished her pistol and sword from her hip and held them carefully over her head.

"We must hurry," Angelica said stiffly, ignoring Jack as they stepped into the cool embrace of water. "We are outrunning armies on both sides."

"I count one," Anna interjected, the river pooling around her waist. "The English are not our only adversary?"

"The Spanish," Jack added as almost an afterthought, recalling the King's violent insistence that the crown beat out the Spanish heathens. A moment of silence passed between them, one where Angelica's face hardened and her eyes narrowed.

"A pirate more vicious than I have ever known, cut throat and ignorant to the word 'mercy'. Her eyes are as black as her soul, her hair the fires of hell; she is a demon of the seas." Angelica spoke with wrath laced in her voice, a hatred that seeped into their skin and infected their hearts.

"Is this your opinion or Blackbeard's?" Anna asked calmly, a smile tugging at her lips. Angelica turned, water sloshing around her waist until she was eye-to-eye with blue, fury meeting furiously calm. "Is this meant to intimidate me?" Anna hissed, her teeth clenched.

"You know _nothing_," the Spanish woman spat, glaring at the younger with hatred that laced her words.

"Whoever this pirate may be, neither she nor you can frighten me. You misjudge my fortitude, Angelica, do not think I'm likely to forget that slight." Anna's eyes were hard, her back straight, and her fingers numb on the handle of her sword. Jack grinned, unabashedly projecting his pride.

"We shall see how bravely you fight when the enemy is upon us, the Fountain before us, and immortality within your reach," Angelica whispered, turning sharply back towards the ever marching trail of men.

Anna smiled, shaking her head in amusement as they continued on. Jack nudged her on, water shifting with their every step as they moved onward.

"Is making enemies a pastime of yours?" he asked softly, his smile refusing to die. She shrugged, he laughed, the sound reverberated through the jungle, rebounding off the heavy growth of trees and the thick wetness of the humid air.

When they emerged from the water, dripping and beginning to tire, Blackbeard sent them a moment to breathe with a flick of his hand. Crewmen dispersed, finding places to rest and dry off, keeping the wetness from their boots and their clothes. Anna slumped next to Jack, resting her head lazily on his shoulder, wondering if there would be reprieve from the oppressive heat of La Florida.

"Clergyman. On the off chance that this does not go well for me," Jack started as sincerely as he could, facing Phillip with earnest eyes he hoped would not betray the not-yet-dormant fear of death. "I would like it noted that here now that I am fully prepared to believe in whatever I must, so that I may be welcomed into that place where the goody-goodies get to go once they pop their clogs, savvy?"

Anna remained silent, watching Jack's dark eyes grow far away, to planes of sand that never ended and the blinding insanity that took months to fully eradicate. Her eyes were sad, layers of blue that seemed depthless and drawn to Jack. She couldn't take away that fear, no matter how hard she tried.

"We have a word for that, Jack. You can convert," Phillip said softly, a smile lighting up his dirty face.

"I was thinking more of an as needed basis," Jack admitted dully, kicking at the spongy ground beneath him. Anna smiled, memories of half-forgotten gods clinging to their crumbling thrones fresh in her mind. Jack believed, so did she.

"When did you convert?" Anna asked, bringing the subject away from Jack's blackened morality and sense of justice. Phillip met her eyes with a cool aqua gaze of his own that seemed to drive her in memory.

"During the pirate raid of London." His voice was steady and assured, the smile erased from his features, earnest replacing it as he begged her to remember. Her eyes widened, shock overtaking her body as she grew still, frozen with her head on Jack's shoulder. "A Princess pushed me into a church amidst the gunfire and told me not to look back."

She was racing, mind tumbling over itself in the attempt to sort reality and fiction, those sea-colored eyes bursting with need and softness and that was the look of a missionary. That was the look of a Man of God that knows the word and lives by it. And he was alive.

She sat up on automatic, her eyes slipping in every direction, attempting to find some grip on reality, some way to answer him that wouldn't leave her stuttering and stupid. The coffin lay behind her, the glass fogging and a hand flat against the side, scrambling for the air Anna was taking for granted as she tried to control her uneven breathing.

"Dear Lord," she whispered, scrambling to her knees and rushing towards the mermaid. Phillip was just behind her, his movements frantic and numb over the edges of the coffin, tracing the bronze lock.

"Quartermaster, she cannot breathe," he nearly shouted, his voice carrying a power Anna was unaccustomed to. Jack stood beside her, unwillingly calm to bring Anna back from the edges of her own mind. He stood strong and it kept her grounded.

"She has water," the undead man answered flatly.

"She needs air," Phillip urged, curling his fingers under the edge and trying to pry the lid open. The lock wouldn't budge, neither would the Quartermaster. "Open this."

"She will escape," the Quartermaster stated calmly.

"You're killing her!" Phillip owed her a debt. She saved him, and he knew it, tumbling rock and a sky of fire swept through his vision, but she had pushed him down.

"I support the missionary's position," Jack added, watching the dark-haired mermaid with sympathy. Anna watched the unmoving puppet to Blackbeard with fury burning in her veins. She refused to stay still longer, standing in a fluid motion and slamming her sword into the lock, forcing it to break. The mermaid gasped, shoving her body towards the slim crack of air and sucking it down like it was beautiful, breathing deeply, her eyes rolling back in content.

"See?" Phillip asked nearly triumphantly, smiling at Anna's accomplished look. The undead moved haltingly, as if caught on strings they couldn't see. He jerked the sword back, the lid falling shut with a swish of air that seemed to break through Anna's chest. Phillip shoved his Bible into the crack, keeping it open, the words of his God keeping a mythical creature breathing.

"Onward," Blackbeard muttered, sparing them only a glance as he moved back onto their course. Anna stood, gripping her sword loosely as she faced the missionary.

"You haven't changed much from the dirty pirate boy I found in the streets. Still as honorable as ever," she said around a chuckle, a brightness in her eyes that refused to die. He smiled softly, turning back to face the mermaid. Her eyes were large, hopeful even, trained on the missionary only.

"Managed to be captured again," Phillip added, allowing his body to be pushed back into marching, walking next to Anna and Jack as they followed the will of a broken compass. She shrugged, falling into step with him as her eyes found the small pieces of the sky overhead, the rest blocked by green.

"But I am not the savior this time, just another prisoner," she said quietly. Jack nodded softly, empathy ringing through his head and seeping into his veins. They were bound here, more so than ever.

"Is it true? What they say befell you once you returned to the palace?" Phillip asked suddenly, a guilt swimming in his eyes that she hadn't seen before. She grinned cheekily.

"That would depend on which story you've heard. I have almost as many as Jack," she said proudly, as if each word spoken was a badge of honor she carried on her vest. Phillip watched her grin, childish and quick, a flash of fire in her eyes he'd never seen before. Jack seemed to know it better than himself, the look that overtook his eyes was soft and sweet.

"Never as many as I, love," Jack murmured, placing a hand on her shoulder. She leaned into him instinctually, flicking her gaze to his demurely.

"One day, birdie, one day," she promised, the child-like burning in her eyes going strong.

Phillip wondered if they knew how visible it was, that bond they had at the waist that kept them coming back, one rarely seen without the other. They seemed to never tire of each other's company, finishing thoughts and reveling in silence when they were alone. He wondered if they knew of the silent communication they seemed to have, when Jack's hand dropped from her shoulder and she took the compass from his fingers. Phillip wondered if they knew that others could see them, when they stared at each other like they were alone. He wondered if even they understood the levels on which they felt, endless understanding and friendship that could go deeper.

Phillip wondered if they realized they were in love.

Xx

The cliff seemed to be the gates to hell, nowhere to go but down, it would lead to the center of the Earth where the Devil play with his victims. The Locker for those who die on land, fire burning in the pits of their souls and it wouldn't end. Anna swallowed, staring down at the white water crashing over rocks, imagining her body being caught between them, slamming her into sharp edges and immobile forces again and again and again until she was only scraps left over. The waterfalls would have torn her, the currents ripped her, she would be dead.

"Just as I thought," she muttered, flicking the compass closed. "Not this way!" she called to the caravan behind her, Jack nodding along fervently. Angelica moved to their sides, flicking her gaze over the edge to follow the rock siding down.

"This is the way, isn't it?" Angelica asked, staring at a broken bridge near them, pieces of wood ripped and shattered, falling into the swirling madness beneath them.

"'Course it is, but we should go around, to the east," Jack said quietly, gesturing noncommittally to the right, wondering idly if that was actually the east. He wouldn't know.

"That will take us out of the path of the Chalices," Angelica pointed out, her gaze rapt on Jack.

"Then we circle back, keep everyone still alive safe," Anna propositioned calmly, the memory of dead sailors in White Cap Bay still fresh in their minds. Angelica glared at her, previous argument not yet forgotten, bitterness refusing to fade.

"We do not have time, our enemies are upon us. _She _is not far behind!" Angelica shouted, her voice echoing off the sides of the ravine.

"You're the one who insisted on bringing a bloody mermaid!" Jack refuted, crossing his arms in contempt. Anna smiled to herself, judging the distance it was to jump to land safely, wondering if Tia Dalma could keep her safe this far upriver.

"The mutiny did not help!"

"You walk like a girl!"

"You would know!"

"Someone must go," Blackbeard said quietly, his soft voice carrying more weight than either of the shouting pirates. He stood stoically near the edge, too close to Anna for comfort.

"You mean split up?" Angelica asked, her eyes consumed suddenly with worry and Anna wondered if she did care for the crew. If she had a conscience.

"You mean jump?" Jack asked in surprise. "This I would love to see."

"Sparrow will go," Blackbeard said firmly. The smile slid from Jack's face, falling into an instinctual fear that Anna felt burning in her own chest. "Find the ship, retrieve the Chalices."

"What makes you think he'll come back?" Angelica asked, stepping forward to face her father.

"Yes, what makes you think he'll come back?" Jack parroted, his eyes flicking between Blackbeard and the water below. Anna watched him with soft eyes, wondering what her role would be.

"We cannot trust him, Father. I'll go," Angelica announced, passing off her sword and gun to Scrum as she prepared to jump. Teach slung out an arm, shoving her back towards the jungle with decisive movements.

"How much farther to the Fountain? I'm running out of time," Blackbeard asked Anna, watching her eyes flick to the compass then out over the canyon again, her expression critical.

"About a day's march north following that river, you get to a series of pools...then you're close," she said finally, flipping the compass shut with dirty fingers. Teach approached her, prying the black box from her hands with only a dark look thrown at her.

"You will go," he said to Jack, not bothering to look at him. Anna swallowed, flicking her eyes to Jack again in something like comfort. He stared over the edge nervously.

"You know that feeling you get, sometimes, when you're standing in a high place, sudden urge to jump?" Jack asked rhetorically, his hands nearly shaking. "I never have it." Swords were pressed in on him, urging him forward, but he remained standing straight. Anna rolled her eyes, watching the events playing before her eyes as if a bystander, watching a play and not liking the plot, wanting to change something, anything.

"I need those Chalices," Blackbeard hissed, his pistol level with Jack's eyes. He had the sense to show no fear, spreading his arms wide like a man crucified.

"Shoot. Save me the trouble of the fall," he whispered, refusing to turn his eyes to Anna, who watched with growing trepidation, her hands fisted at her sides.

"You will go," Blackbeard warned. "Or I will kill her." A gun was pointed at Anna, the barrel keen on her chest, the ever beating heart nestled beneath muscle and sinew. She froze, twenty paces from the edge and on the fringe of the undead sailors, Jack too far away to help and the gun unyielding.

The world seemed to pause for Jack, moments where sunlight made his skin warm and the air heavy, where Anna breathed evenly, and her eyes were wide and lips open half-way, as if to form a word. He wouldn't have another death on his hands. Not this woman, not this time.

"You wouldn't," Jack hissed, his eyes hard. Blackbeard turned his attention back to him, long enough for Anna to breathe, suck in air and narrow her eyes. She cursed herself in her mind, refusing to be the weak little bird trapped in a cage. She didn't need saving, she would do it herself.

She was running before she was sure what was happening, boots gaining traction as they dug into the wet ground and wind brushing against her face. The edge in sight and everyone else still struggling to catch up to her sudden decision, she felt herself crouch, leap, fall. Air was everywhere, caressing her body in a cool embrace as she plunged downward, having enough sense to aim her body straight down.

A scream tore from her throat in only the last seconds, drowned out just as quickly by the sudden, harsh embrace of fresh water. She choked, forcing her body towards a surface she needed more than anything else. She broke water, breathing like it was a gift, clutching a rock to her left to keep from being swept away.

"_You coming?" _she shouted up to Jack, smiling despite herself, grinning past water droplets tracing down her face. His shout lasted so much longer, starting from the top and calling out to the world for seconds until he plunged into the water next to her. She laughed when water splashed her face, putting off the ache in her muscles and the weariness in her bones. When this was over, she would spend a week on the Pearl, doing nothing but enjoying the sun and the soft way it bathed her skin.

"Wet, wet again," Jack muttered as he surfaced, glaring at her. "Why'd you do that?" he questioned, a frown coloring his lips.

"Because someone had to," she said with a shrug. "Because that man had a gun on me and I had a way out. And I didn't want to stay there if you were gone," she admitted in a low mumble.

"What was that?" he asked around a grin, his hands digging into the same rock as her, his body wishing to be swept away by the current. "Did I hear you would _miss _me?"

"You won't be hearing it again with boldness like that," she said around a grin, pushing herself from her perch to swim back towards the beach and the ocean. He followed, chuckling lowly as the water helped them along.

"Boldness is what drew you to me in the first place, darling, don't deny it," Jack called, catching up to her quickly, his strong arms pushing him forward.

"For fear of sounding too much like our dear Elizabeth," Anna muttered. "I do fall victim to adoring such a boldness. Though often, I wish I didn't."

"But where does that leave you? One as bold as yourself should know the risks of hating to love the boldness which you yourself harbor. That would be hypocrisy, darling," he said charmingly, managing to flash her a quick smile through the river around them, water splashing against his face and the current pulling him towards the mouth, towards the ocean.

"I don't think I'll ever be as bold as you, Jack," Anna answered quickly, kicking almost lethargically through the cool water. Her boots were heavy, her clothes weighted down with water, but without the sense of urgency the night before carried, when they were surrounded by black water and mermaids. She was content.

"Just bold enough to jump from absurdly high places?" Jack questioned, his voice drifting dangerously close to serious, his brow furrowed. He shook himself, forcing a smile back in place and pretending like his heart hadn't stopped when she jumped, that his hands hadn't shaken and a scream hadn't been working its way up his throat. He pretended like he hadn't been terrified.

"If it keeps me breathing."

Jack paused at that thought, remembering the way water had crashed through his senses when he jumped, air stolen from his lungs with the cold fingers of fresh water. "You are very strange," he answered finally, pausing in the rhythmic strokes of his arms through the water to look at her, and let his body be pushed softly by the current.

"You've said that before," she whispered, her voice almost lost among the sound of water rolling against the rocks.

"But it hits harder every time, adds a sense of drama, I think. Plus, it never grows to be untrue, you're always strange."

She smiled, rolling onto her back to face the uninterrupted blue sky above her for a moment long enough for the sun to hit her skin just right, to make her look like something else, something more than just a dirty pirate. "Thank you."

"You're very welcome," Jack whispered, grinning as they picked up their movements again and swam faster for the white sand and crashing waves. The water carried them on, on their side for what felt like the first time in forever, the soothing touch of the river like an embrace that held eternal.


	21. Chapter 21

**Hey guys! IT'S SUMMER! And that means I can update more often, promise! Anyway, I wanted to give you a first look at the pirate, THE pirate. I really hope you like it, because I changed it like four times to make it work for me. A few people's names were made up, and a lot of research went into this part. Please review, let me know what you think. **

** -Han**

The pirate stalked the dense jungle of La Florida with purpose, her steps seeming to echo around her, as if they were against stone instead of soft, wet ground. Her red hair fell into her eyes, strands of it sticking to her sweaty forehead, the heat surrounding her oppressive. Her second in command rushed to keep up with the Captain's quick, determined movements, trying to discern where the woman would step next. The small group kept their distance from her, watching her warily as she inspected the trail in front of her. Her elegant movements seemed to enrapture and frighten the crew, having seen her in action too many times to mistake her for innocent.

Tanned skin caught the spattered sunlight that wormed its way through the blanket of trees overhead, scars overlapping scars decorating her bare arms and neck, days when she almost met the end and managed to pull herself back were fresh in her mind. The woman ran her fingers over a split fern, the cut of a sword clear to her eyes, pointing her ahead. She took tactful steps, imagining her enemy rampaging through the same area only an hour or so before, keeping her distance was important. She'd been far enough behind to lull them into complacency, her icy blue eyes shining amidst heavy rain, darkness, now sunlight, always a step away, never far enough to lose them.

"Calico wouldn' o'liked this," an older pirate muttered lowly, thinking she couldn't hear him. The Captain turned, a quick motion that sent her red hair fanning out behind her like the fires of a Hell too dark to envision. Her sword glinting lowly in the sunlight, the last thing this man might ever see.

"Calico's _dead_. If he'd fought like a man, he wouldn't have been hanged like a dog," she spat, trying to cover the pain, the irrevocable hurt that laced every breath she took. Her husband had been dead long enough for her to learn to cover the pain. "Unless you want to meet the same end, Charles, I suggest you stop whining like an infant and do as I say." Her teeth were bared, cruel blue eyes boring into the middle-aged pirate. He quivered, nodding dumbly and accepting the rarely afforded mercy his Captain had given him.

"Yes ma'am," Charles said softly, his eyes trained on the ground. His Captain rolled her eyes, running a hand through her fiery hair and sighing lowly.

"Simon, lead these bilge rats onward," she instructed her stoic first mate, the lanky man nodding in understanding before pushing Charles roughly in the right direction, sending him stumbling into the jungle, following the trail Blackbeard had unwittingly left behind.

"And you Captain?" Simon asked, his dark hair falling over his eyes, sticking to his forehead. His delicately carved features made him seem as unobtrusive as herself, though she knew him to be just as vicious. He was ten years younger than her, but understood the woman in a way only her late husband and Mary had. They were both dead, she needed someone she could trust. Simon was as close as she got.

"_The Sanitago_," she said shortly, gripping her sword tighter. "Blackbeard will _not _be gaining eternal life today, you can be sure of that," she hissed. Simon grinned, nodding respectfully and turning back to the small group they'd taken with them from the deck of _Calico's Revenge_. They walked on, heads down to avoid her cold eyes, hating the way her gaze sent violent shivers down their spines.

The woman watched them go, her gaze trained on their thundering steps, willing them to be silent as they moved through the thick vegetation. She rolled her eyes and turned again, her red hair fanning out behind her, the dangerous look in her eyes refusing to die. She needed this, being alone and rushing towards the brink of an adventure she couldn't even describe, ending a feud as long lasting as her career as a pirate, finding the key to living forever, living free for the rest of time. The pirate moved then, running until the world around her was only a blur of green, the beginnings of a growl crawling up the back of her throat and she would end Blackbeard, his daughter too if she got in the way, she would steal the eternal drink and see horizon after horizon until the world itself crumbled and fell away.

She would kill the man who gave away their position all those years ago, the one who whispered to informants and had the _Revenge _captured. Calico Jack had died that day, screaming for her to save him, his handsome face purpling and vacant by the time the rope finally choked him of air. Mary and she were more fortunate, bartering their way out of hanging with all they had to offer. Themselves. The Captain had cried for days afterwards, being stripped away of her dignity, the spark that made her a pirate to save her own life.

And now revenge was the only thought on her mind, retribution for the lives Blackbeard had taken, the dignity he stole, the youth she'd given up while laboring in pregnancy, giving the child back the black-hearted man she'd been used by. Blackbeard would pay.

Nothing could stop her, she wouldn't let it.

Xx

Barbossa led his own band of unkempt soldiers, each man dirtier than the last, the wear of constant movement beginning to show on the once proud members of the King's Navy. His sword guided them through the thick jungle, no light made it through the blanket overhead, giving the illusion of night growing darker with each step they took further into the embrace of the wilderness. The grunts of the men behind him was beginning to grate on Barbossa's nerves as he attempted to follow the directions Gibbs had earlier pointed out with minimal words.

"Be nice to have a map about now," Barbossa hissed, throwing a glare over his shoulder towards the weathered pirate.

"Or a ship," Gibbs responded in turn, a quick insult hurled with no regard for rank or superiority. Gibbs didn't have to operate under the illusion of clean living, of rejecting piracy, the very thing Barbossa thrived on. Times had changed, had reduced the once proud pirate to scrambling at any opportunity to take out Blackbeard, even if it meant becoming what he hated. His eyes caught a shock of color adorning Gibbs' dark blue vest, and everything in him froze.

"Stop!" Barbossa shouted, his eyes wide and his heart beating faster than he thought it could. The small frog latched to Gibbs' vest was bright red, like the blood Barbossa had seen flood through many a man's body and be exposed to air. "Hold still. Ye dare not let it touch your skin," he muttered, willing Gibbs to be still as he pulled on a pair of white gloves. Groves passed him a pair of silver tongs, Barbossa took them with careful fingers and closing them on the poisonous amphibian.

Groves held a jar gingerly, a grim look in his eyes as Barbossa shoved the frog inside and screwed the lid shut. He knew the small unimpressive animal could be more deadly than the Kraken he'd known to exist not long before, when the rule of sea was given to Lord Becket. Things had changed, the Goddess of the sea returned, the rule of it taken back by her capable hands.

Gibbs stared down Barbossa with condescending eyes, watching the nearly delighted look the old pirate adorned as he gazed at the red frog nestled among others. "What? What be wrong with an older man havin' a hobby?" Barbossa asked, feigning surprise as he stood straighter to meet Gibbs' eyes. "What've stopped for, eh?"

"Push on!" Groves ordered, relinquishing control of the jar thankfully and forging his way through the heavy vegetation once again.

"Ye can sleep when you're dead! Push on!" Barbossa shouted, his words carrying the weight of a man who'd commanded for years, who was used to the smell of the sea and the feel of the salt and the slurred insults a pirate could give. The fatigued men moved on, each step taxing on their tired bodies, but Barbossa showed no mercy. He gazed down at the poison encased in glass with a grim smile. "Fortune continues to favor us."

Xx

The beach seemed inviting, bringing Anna back to the island she'd been trapped on with Jack and Elizabeth what felt like so long ago. That was when Jack was the best friend she could ask for and love was never in the cards. Things had changed; she'd grown from the background character in her own story to take a center stage she hadn't even known existed. She was writing it her own way, loving every moment of the wind against her face and the untold story before her. Her body had already begun to dry, after the two pirates had pulled themselves from the cool embrace of fresh water in favor of traipsing across white sand, navigating through fallen trees, stripped of bark and weathered until they seemed to be the bones of ancient creatures. The sun was beginning to set, slipping below the horizon so far out of reach.

"Couldn't have been fun to get up there," Jack commented dully, staring up in fascination at _The Santiago, _precariously stuck to the side of a cliff, half-buried in the unforgiving stone wall, vines and foliage growing in through the cracks in the deck, holding the vessel to the side. It reminded him of _The Flying Dutchman, _already becoming part of its surroundings, succumbing the influences of the nature surrounding it, like Jones' vessel was once caked with barnacles and sea weed.

"Ponce de Leon was not very good at steering, apparently," Anna muttered softly, a smirk dancing across her lips. Jack slung an arm around her shoulder, leading her towards the steep Cliffside with uneven steps.

"The breath of gods is not easy to navigate, darling," he answered quietly. Anna rolled her eyes and turned to face him, his arm falling from her shoulder until she could grab it, taking the lead towards the assured long climb.

"You did," she reminded that space in-between their first and second adventures still swimming with mystery. But she knew this for sure, it being asserted while they searched for willing souls to trade for Will and Jack's lives, Norrington practically spitting it through grime and rum in _The Captain's Daughter_ after leaving his position. The hurricane had ruined the honorable man, but Jack had made it through.

She missed James sometimes, when the water was high and she was reminded of his awkward, tight smile and the way he loved a woman that would never love him back. She shook off the memory in favor of the future, stealing the silver chalices and making their way back to the Fountain, where they would end this.

"Aye," Jack answered softly, memories swimming behind his dark eyes as they made their way forward. "That was before I had a princess to take care of," he joked, allowing her to pull him.

"King," she corrected, flashing a grin in his direction. He nodded, as if he'd overlooked the title he'd help give her, the one that she carried with pride when contacting the Court. The one she was reluctant to take but didn't let go of, a mark of her freedom that couldn't be taken from her.

"Well, I'd thought you'd _forgotten, _with the way you've been acting. Letting Blackbeard intimidate you and all." Anna couldn't tell if he was joking, the spark in his eyes was burning, seeping into her skin and heating her blood.

"Jack, you would know by now, if anything frightened me," she said quietly, her eyes finding a quickly darkening sky. "Nothing Blackbeard could do to me, absolutely _nothing _makes fear roll down my spine."

She didn't add anything to it, didn't mention how it wasn't herself she was concerned for. Jack could tell, could see it in the set of her shoulders and the soft way she sighed when she met his eyes a moment later. He didn't say anything on the matter.

"Your majesty," he beckoned with a broad sweep of his arm, allowing her to climb up first. She looked warily at the vertical climb, rubbing her callused hands together and preparing for a long way up. "I'll catch you," Jack promised from behind her, sensing her trepidation.

"Thanks birdie," she murmured, gripping the first hold she could find once calculating a safe route up. The stone dug into her palms, but years of work alongside Will in the smithy had made her strong. She lifted herself up, upper body straining, muscles already tired from miles of swimming. She refused to slip. Jack watched from below her, arms already outstretched to catch her if she lost her grip, a small smile on his lips.

"Anything for the King."

Xx

The glass coffin tumbled to the ground, shattering in a thousand pieces of sparkling crystal across the wet ground. The mermaid curled in on herself, her harsh breathing ringing in the ears of the missionary as her tail dissolved, scales flattening into skin, splitting into legs. Her pale skin was like porcelain, blue eyes shifting around her in terror, her arms wrapping around her knees to try and conceal her nakedness.

Phillip stripped off his shirt, stumbling towards her before any other man could move, wrapping the thing fabric around her slight frame with gentle fingers. She met his eyes, huge, innocent, fearful, like a caged animal. She leaned into him almost imperceptibly.

"You will walk," Blackbeard ordered, pausing in his steps to glare back at her, his dark eyes narrowing on the protective way Phillip's tan arms encircled the creature.

She tried to stand, her pal legs shaking with the effort it took to haul her body up into the air. Phillip braced her, his arms pulling her up towards a sky she'd never been closer to, feeling air in places she was unaccustomed to, the skin of her legs tingled with its touch. She toppled back towards the ground, the dead leaves and dark soil rushing up towards her face too fast for her to understand. The man grabbed her, kept her from the pain that was sure to come.

"I cannot," she whispered, her eyes cast down in shame. She heard the cocking of a gun and look up to meet Blackbeard's cold, unfeeling stare.

"You will walk, or you will die," he promised, his chilling voice sending her nerves on edge and making her remember why her sisters hated men so much. Why they feared them.

She was speechless, trying to form the words to keep her breathing while the Captain stared down at her. Angelica glanced hesitantly at her father, wondering if he knew what he was doing, what he was risking as the fragile mermaid stuttered for breath. Phillip was there again in another moment, his arms reaching for her cautiously.

"Put your arms around me," he requested, his aqua eyes flicking up to Blackbeard's dark gaze. Her fearsome look turned biting, a strict glare burning through his skin and into his soul.

"I do not ask for help!" she hissed, her jaw clenched. For a moment, Phillip could see the fearsome creature she was, the one capable of killing him, of ending his life at any moment. But he owed her a debt, owed her for saving his life.

"But you need it," he whispered, staring at her as if enraptured. She was beautiful, undeniably. Her porcelain skin was so different from the women he had seen at sea, hardened and crass, she was delicate. Her blue eyes were innocent, swept clean of pain and despair and every harsh reality known to others. She was different.

Her arms slipped around his neck, and he stood carefully, supporting her at the knees and back, allowing her scantily clad body to press against his naked chest. She could feel his heartbeats, he could feel her breathing.

"We are in a hurry, yes?" Phillip asked sarcastically, glaring at the stone-cold man before him. Blackbeard was not salvageable, he couldn't be saved from the fiery depths of a hell he was promised. The Captain was evil and no god could change that.

"Do not fall behind," he warned, turning his back on the young missionary and his speechless daughter. They moved slowly, on automatic. Angelica had hardly spoken since Jack followed Anna over the side of a cliff, not bothering to hesitate at the edge, the good Captain had dove straight down, a scream echoing around them. The Spanish woman was left alone, wondering why she felt anything towards the charming man at all, wondering why she was so taken with his tan skin and devilish smile. He was untamed, though with a woman at his side, Angelica would think he'd been changed. She'd hoped to lure him out with promises of freedom, to keep him from Anna's innocently depthless blue eyes with hushed words of the wind beneath him and the horizon before him. But he already had that.

And she couldn't stop wanting him.

"Hold here 'til I say," she shouted at the crew some time later, her dark eyes flicking back to the tiring missionary sadly. He needed a break; she needed a moment to eradicate a Sparrow from her mind.

Phillip lowered the mermaid slowly onto a log, watching her struggle to keep herself steady. "Such beauty. Surely you are one of God's own creations and not a descendant of those dark creatures who found no refuge on the Ark. Such beauty," he whispered, standing again as if to walk away, his bare chest glistening with a thin layer of sweat.

"You are different," she said softly, a nearly French accent coloring her words as she sat huddled on her root, drawing his shirt tighter around her thin body. He turned back, confusion riddled in his eyes. "You protect."

"Because I was taught to, by the woman you saw earlier, the princess," he said quietly, a smile on his lips. "Anyone can be 'different' if they find the light in their own hearts." She didn't respond, her mind casting back to the small, lightly tanned woman who stared moved around a pirate in a way she didn't understand. The mermaid wondered if she could move around Phillip like that. If she wanted to.

"You see the Fountain?" Angelica asked her father quietly, casting her eyes back to the young missionary with eyes for a mermaid. Love was the last thing she wanted to witness right now.

"No, but we are close," Blackbeard answered quietly, following his daughter's line of sight until it fell on the quivering mermaid. "Bring the creature, cover its head!" he shouted the command, waiting for some crew member to follow it. They were too scared not to.

"_She has a name!" _

That was the missionary, it's always the missionary. He rolled his eyes, willing himself to be calm when he wanted so _so _much to reach for the pistol at his side. "Pray tell," he requested, his arms spread wide. He didn't have time for this, he was too busy running from the grip of Death he had evaded for so many years. A one legged man was set to take his life tonight, and he was going to stop it, stop that vile Pirate Lady from his past watch him take his final breath. It wouldn't happen this way. He wouldn't let it.

Phillip glanced back at the small woman, the mythical creature of his dreams, the one that saved his life. She stared back at him, ever the unknowing enchanter, pulling him deeper into realms of dreams and mystery, where his god stood among a thousand others, willing to let their Divine hands touch the waves lapping at the shores and spread magic between land and sea and the sky. She was a siren, beautiful, pulling him into deeper waters, where he would drown a happy man, touched by magic. When he spoke it was with the same conviction with which he spoke of God, laced with devotion, laced with strength.

"She is Syrena."


	22. Chapter 22

**I'm going to ask for five reviews, this time around, only five. I don't mean to sound whiny or needy, it's just that I only did this story because everyone wanted it. I would just like a response, guys. I hope the scene changes aren't confusing, since I'm bouncing between past and present. I really hope you like this, because it's taken me like a week to be okay with it. **

**-Han**

Darkness seeped into _The Santiago_, shadows clinging to the decaying wood like the eerie ghosts of the crewmen, refusing to leave the mausoleum their ship had become. Silence consumed the broken memory of greatness, of waves crashing against the hull and the sails full with wind that wouldn't lead them astray, and blue skies that never seemed to end. The deteriorating husk felt like a crypt to Jack as he pulled his body carefully into the lower decks through a gaping hole, one that seemed to yawn like the cavernous jaws of a Leviathan he remembered with frustrating clarity. Anna was already inside, moving slowly, her steps only whispers on the rotten wood, like the toes of her boots were kissing the floor.

Vines grew through the cracks, taking half the ship into the embrace of the Cliffside with strong green arms. Everything seemed grey, dipped in the darkest waters of the sea, where the dead travel between the worlds and leave behind their misery. The air was wet, heavy with humidity and heat, and long tendrils of vines hung from the ceiling, trying to touch the floor below.

"Step lightly," he whispered softly, as she stretched her arms out wide, as if to embrace the stale air around them, to keep her balance. The boards creaked below her, groaning their frustration at the weight.

"You as well," she answered without turning, her brow furrowed in concentration as she assessed the strength of the floor, taking careful, strategic steps. "You're heavier than I."

"Birds have hollow wings," he answered, his gold teeth sparkling in the low light with his smirk. She chuckled, reaching a set of stairs that would undoubtedly take them to the Captain's cabin above, where the lasting corpse of the Captain would rest for an infinite eternity.

"As long as it's not a hollow head," she quipped back, taking the stairs two at a time with a grace Jack didn't think she possessed, balancing on the very edges. Moonlight flooded the room they entered, and both pirates caught the shine, the ethereal glow of riches they'd only imagined, layers of gold and jewels that glittered dully with years of neglect. They were resilient, like an eternal flame refusing to disappear in a gust of smoke at the call of the wind.

Their eyes traveled the expanse of treasure as one, ancient gems and maps to half-forgotten worlds buried beneath piles of silver and gold, until their eyes found the large bed, curtains drawn back and grown dusty over the years. A skeleton grinned back at them, a red nightcap askew on what was left of his grey skin. Coarse hair clung to sallow and almost nonexistent cheeks, his gaunt fingers clutched at a piece of yellow parchment, held perfectly in place while the rest of him had slumped lifelessly to the side. The empty caverns of his eyes bored into the pair, like the Once Captain was trying to tell them something with his blank, skeletal smile.

"Ponce De Leon," Jack whispered, almost in awe.

"He doesn't look to be dead two hundred years," Anna whispered, almost fearfully, her blue eyes flicking over the resilient memory of skin and hair on his face, refusing to decay fully. He couldn't have been dead that long, the ghost of life still echoed on his face, not yet drained away, not yet gone.

"And so the plot thickens," Jack murmured, his body half swallowed in the shadows that consumed the cabin around them, the breadth of the room obscured by a darkness that seeped into their skin. "Adequately supplemented by the contents of such thickness," he added with a strained light-heartedness that didn't fully reach his voice, as he gazed at the layers of gold buried in the room.

"If forty pirates dreamt forty nights of treasure, it would not match the contents of this room," an almost rusty feminine voice sounded out across the inky darkness, reverberating through the silence, her Irish lilt making the words sound musical. Jack and Anna spun as one, reaching for their weapons with quick, assured hands. "Don't." That was a command, simple and confident, like she'd been giving them all her life.

A shadowed figure came into view slowly, the darkness clinging to the woman's body as if to keep her in their realm. The dull shine of a pistol caught their eyes first, the barrel pressed snugly against Former-Captain Barbossa's temple, pressing into the grey skin until a mark would be left afterwards, if Barbossa saw an afterwards.

"I won't hesitate," the woman said, grinning hollowly in the darkness. Barbossa rolled his eyes, shifting slightly to rub at the joining of wood and flesh in his peg leg as if it pained him. Anna swallowed, trying to make out the features of the woman whose voice struck a chord somewhere in her chest.

"You," he said softly, his young face crumpled into confusion that leaked into his eyes. He wasn't talking to the one with the gun, his eyes trained on the man he once called enemy. He'd never seen him like this, traces of white powder in the cracks of his face, his eyes a kind of empty Jack had never seen in a pirate's before, like he was defeated. Barbossa was sitting against a tightly locked treasure chest, his good leg resting awkwardly beneath the heavy wooden stump, his wrinkled fingers rubbing into the space where the skin ended almost mournfully.

"You," Barbossa replied uninterestedly, as if a gun wasn't pressed against his head, as if he might never see anything ever again, as if he was the one holding the weapon. A flicker of a spark lit in his eyes, wavering for a moment where he remembered who he used to be, pirate, all cackling laugh and barked orders and sea spray against his face. Times had changed and he hated that.

"I'm not here to play games," the woman hissed testily, shoving the pistol until Barbossa's head snapped sideways, the crack in his neck sounding out in the silence louder than a clap of thunder or the booming voice of a God. Her icy blue eyes fixed on the two pirates before them, as if daring them to make a move.

"Why _are_ ye here, lass?" Barbossa asked in barely restrained frustration, rolling his head as much as he could in the restrained space, trying to alleviate the sharp jolt of pain the push had caused him.

"Blackbeard," she answered in a clipped tone, her grip on the gun tightening until even Anna could see the whites of her knuckles. Just the name sparked something in the woman's eyes that infiltrated every aspect of her, until she breathed bloodlust and her heartbeats sounded like gunfire.

"Coincidentally, the same reason _we _are here," Jack said as lightly as he could, his nimble fingers reaching slowly for the sword at his belt. The woman cocked the gun, her lips set in a firm line. Anna could see that the woman was beautiful in a rough way, her long red hair tied back with a black bandanna that clashed with her tanned skin that seemed to have been embraced by the sun instead of kissed by it. Her body was muscled, less feminine grace and more brute strength she had honed through years at sea. Her blue eyes were cold, but vibrant, endless.

"And who is _we_?" the woman asked sarcastically, her lip curled into a feral snarl and her body ready to act the instant they affiliated themselves with the scum she'd come to eradicate, the stain on the world she'd come to wipe clean. Vengeance had long taken her, erasing any innocence she'd harbored, any good left to salvage. She was a machine made to kill, made to survive. Any traces of the woman she was were gone. She didn't even miss them.

"_Captain_ Jack Sparrow," Anna introduced with the same air she carried when Jack met her on a dock in Port Royal, an excitement beneath the surface that never died and always wanted more than the monotony of regular life. The woman across from them could feel that through the air between them, the same naiveté she carried when she was that young, caring only for the wind against her face and the horizon always out of reach. She had grown from that now, scars overlapping scars had made her reject the foolish dreams of freedom.

"And King Annabelle Windsor," Jack finished with a flourish of his arm, bowing slightly as he winked at her from the corner of his eye. Anna grinned, all white teeth and nervousness that he could read with only a glance. That title brought back memories, a Goddess set free and a ship consumed by crushing waters, so much had changed, but that smile was still there. She was still there. "You may be wanting to be showing her some respect," Jack added with a conspiring wink.

The gun fell from slack hands.

_The docks of London were cold, the chill seeping into the young woman's skin until she felt like she was made of ice, like she was a part of the frozen wind that struck her tan cheeks. A sliver of silver moon hung above her like a pendulum, ready to end her life for running, her punishment for leaving them behind. Calico Jack was gone, the man she loved more than air, was nothing more than a ghost on the wind she would lay down with that night, half her bed empty and filled with his memory._

_And when she had one of those bad dreams, when she woke up in a sweat, she'd roll into nothing, roll into no one. Her fingers would reach out to twine in his hair and find nothing but the coarse cotton of a pillow undented by the weight of his body. She was cold without him. So cold it hurt._

Anna followed the path of the gun as it reeled through the air in slow motion, catching the blue light of the moon that filtered through the cracks in the ceiling, shining dully. The pistol clattered to the floor, the heavy weapon rebounding off the weak wood and echoing around them until it mirrored their stuttered heartbeats. The woman was left with slack hands and an open mouth that seemed to be ready to form a word, a name, one she hadn't tasted on her lips for years. Her eyes were wide, cold icy blue was vulnerable, like she was for weeks after she made the trade, her body for her freedom, like she was the night the little bundle passed from her hands to her closest friend.

"_Wesson," she whispered, those depthless blue eyes watering on the edges, sparkling in the blanket of darkness that surrounded them. "Take care of her, please, watch over her," she pleaded with Edward Wesson, the only one who survived the British raid on their cove. The little bundle of blankets in his arms was sleeping, blue eyes that looked like hers closed, thankfully, closed. She was named for her, the Captain hated that._

_She should, have been named for Jack or Mary, whose dying words were screams in her head, refusing to leave her as she tossed in the middle of the night, nightmare rolling behind her eyes. _

"_Anne, I swear to you, she will be safe." The older man's promise made her breathing ease, the white-knuckled grip on his jacket slacked. He cradled the little girl like she was precious, like she wasn't the bastard child of pirate and prince, the former using her as an excuse to avoid execution. "But where will you go?" he asked softly, warm brown eyes boring into her soul. He already knew, but he had to ask._

Barbossa didn't wait, the echoes of the fallen gun pounding through his head as he launched himself across the breadth of the cabin, his wooden leg digging into the rotten deck to give him leverage. He reached blindly for the sword at his side, an automatic reaction that he couldn't stop, even if he wanted to. His fingers brushed the handle, the ship lurched violently, the tender grip the vines held on the vessel slipping.

Four pirates were thrown brutally to the ground, gold necklaces and coins raining down on them in a barrage of heavy metal riches. Anna's head slapped against a metal chest and she heard a chorus of demons singing in her ears, the noise almost blocking out the pain that jolted down her spine and left her vision fading in and out of an eternal darkness. She wondered, briefly, if this would be where she would die, clinging blindly to anything within reach as a two-hundred year old ship tore from the side of a cliff.

"_When I die, you have to lay me next to his ghost," she said, looking between the cracks in the dock to the rolling black waves she wished would consume her. "It's better than being alone, Wesson, _anything's_ better than alone."_

"_Will revenge make it hurt any less?" Edward was wise, she knew that, but sometimes she wished he would let her be ignorant, let her be free and wild and the pirate she was meant to be. She shook her head, a tear slipping down her cheek._

"_How do I keep going? How do I live on my own?" Her voice broke on the end, her back bowing under the weight of her loss, all the things taken from her. He shifted the baby in his arms to place a hand on her shoulder, his rough palms a reminder of Calico's, callused from years of labor. He never answered her, she hadn't expected him to._

"Don't move!" Barbossa screamed, trying to keep his footing as his wooden leg slipped from beneath him and send him skidding further across the floor. Jack landed heavily next to Anna, his elbow driving into her ribs as the ship pitched again, sending him rolling onto her with what felt like the force of a thousand rocks. She groaned, trying to breath around the pain blaring through her body as Jack struggled to roll off of her. Gravity worked against them, as the vessel threatened to go crashing into the beach a hundred feet below.

The woman was pinned against the far wall, her face blank and eyes far away. Nothing could hurt her, as she swam through memories and wisps of half-forgotten dreams. She was too far gone, too wrapped up in the past, in the memory of a set of eyes that looked just like hers. The crash of gold coins and ancient treasures didn't jolt her from her reverie, the impending slam of the decaying ship into the ground didn't pull her from the past.

_It may have been hours later, as they stood in silence beneath the stars, before she spoke again. "Annabelle Windsor," she tried the name out on her tongue for the last time, before she turned her back on the baby with dark hair and blue eyes. "My baby, the _princess_." The last word was spat with venom, a hatred for the man her baby would call father. "What has become of me?"_

"_You did what any of us would have. What Reed did, what Rackham would have done. You _survived_," Wesson whispered, staring her down until all she could do was nod, the grip he held on her shoulder was bruising, leaving another mark for her to carry. Her back straightened, her eyes already drying as she whispered her goodbyes, sparing a backwards glance for the little baby Wesson cradled like she was the most precious treasure. He would go to prince's manor later, knock on the heavy door and threaten the pompous man with everything he had to offer, until the little girl was taken in, shielded from the storms of piracy. _

"Jack, I'd be much obliged if you'd…get off me," Anna whispered, once the fragile ship had stilled, leaving Jack and Anna sprawled in the center of the room and Barbossa heaving against the bed posts. The older man's fingers dug into the dark wooden frame, like he'd woken from a night terror in a sweat, panic rushing through his body.

Jack lifted his body carefully, rolling off of her slowly, the pressure of him slipping away in lasting moments that didn't seem to have an end. His dark eyes met hers, boring into the soft blue until a flush rose to her cheeks and her heartbeats picked up again.

"Are you alright, love?" he asked softly, brushing a hand across her forehead, sweeping tangled curls from her eyes. She nodded mutely, having nothing else to say as the pain in her body subsided. The silent woman across from them watched the exchange with a faraway distance that echoed across the worlds, brought memory to now, until her back straightened and her hands fisted and the ache of her body began to set in. She'd been thrown against the wall hard enough to shatter a porcelain vase that had followed her, shattered pieces of china scattered around her.

_Anne left London the pirate she was, the broken pieces of her mending into stronger armor until she was the same vicious, blood thirsty woman she'd been before Blackbeard betrayed their position to the British Navy. The darkness consumed _Calico's Revenge _as it left the dirty city behind, where a little baby would find a father and Wesson would find a respectable job to keep a watchful eye on her. The pirate's eyes rested on starred horizon. She didn't look back. _

She wouldn't look back now, not when her daughter was in front of her, smiling softly at the suave _Captain_ Jack Sparrow, like she used to smile at Calico, with that faint flush on her cheeks that reminded Anne of nights wrapped around her husband so tightly she didn't know where she ended and he began. She wouldn't pull the princess from whatever life she'd built for herself to follow after a forty-five year old woman whose heart beat only for revenge. The girl wouldn't be sucked into this storm, this fury of wind and rain and the thirst for blood that consumed the older woman, the need for vengeance, to make the names of the fallen mean something. Annabelle was too young for that, too new to the world that held so much more than a bloody sword and ghosts.

Anne wouldn't take her daughter away from the blue skies and horizon's she herself used to believe in, the love she used to cherish.

A gun cocked, the metallic sound pounding into her head with the force of a god, refusing to leave her mind. Blue met blue, the perfect match. Anna held the pistol with assured hands, Jack having helped her up while the Captain's mind was trying to protect the girl, the little girl with a gun.

"Who are you?" Anna demanded, a harshness in her voice not even Jack had expected, like waves crashing against rocks in a storm. "Are you here to kill Blackbeard or help him or steal the Fountain or _what? _I'd answer quickly, it would not be hard for me to shoot you," she hissed. Anne saw blue eyes as cold as her own, a mirror reflecting back at her and somewhere, her daughter had a backbone, had that bloodlust already burning through her veins and maybe she was too late to keep her innocent.

"I'm going to kill that bastard, and the likes of his stooges won't stop me," Anne spat, taking a half-step forward that rocked the ship gently, like it was still sailing on calm waters. Her fingers gripped the hilt of her sword, her teeth bared and eyes narrowed.

"Miss, maybe you heard incorrectly, but I can assure you that Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirate King are stooges of no one," Jack cut in good naturedly, a grin sparkling in the darkness as his gold caps glowed. His arms were spread wide, encompassing Anna in a make-believe embrace, where she could feel the warmth of his arm but not the comfort of a touch. He was too far away and too close all at once. Jack's grin went slack as he caught Barbossa's incredulous look. "We are simply operating under tense and awkward circumstances in order to retrieve my compass and…destroy the Fountain of Youth?" The end was a question, one his eyes knew the answer to.

"Jack, you're not one to throw away a chance at immortality," Barbossa cut in, his glare like a physical touch to the pirate Captain as the older man saw through to his blackened soul. He nodded, like a reprimanded child, his hands dropping to his sides in slow motion.

"As Leon will tell you, it is not true immortality," Anna rebuked for him, nodding in the corpses direction nonchalantly. "Now, if you please, answer my question."

Silence consumed them, the darkness of the world outside infiltrating their very souls as the three stared pointedly at the older woman, her red hair falling around her face and her piercing eyes trained on the pair that matched hers. Mother stared at daughter, daughter at enemy.

"Anne Bonny."


	23. Chapter 23

**I'm so sorry this is two days late, I really hadn't meant for that to happen, but this chapter refused to flow for me, and I wanted to make sure I did it justice. I really hope it won't happen again, and please review? I've been trying really hard, and I really want to know how you feel about the way I'm going. Thank you.**

** -Han**

Anne Bonny watched her daughter lower the pistol in a daze, a barrage of emotion flitting across her eyes, vying to take center stage, though not one held steadfast in her body. The war of thought seemed to overpower the young woman, until her gaze was swimming and her lips were parted. The girl had her eyes, even the same hollow whisper through the blue, like the pieces of the sea that swam there were lonely, cut off from the rest of their home. Other than that she was a melting pot of her parents, no feature truly distinguishable, her face was her own and Anne would not have wished it different.

She was beautiful.

Her brown hair curled around her face as if constantly snarled in the wind, and the dirt and grime that clung to her sea-stained clothing made her seem rough, like she tumbled down from a high pedestal to stand before them. The man at her side was striking in a way Calico had never been, angular cheekbones and eyes that swam in shadow and never ended, and that gaze flicked between Anna and Bonny with a mistrust that had been bread of years at sea. His hand twitched, inching through the stale air towards Anna's callused fingers as if to snatch her up and whisk her away.

But Anna's eyes were rapt on the whispers of smoke, the undefined woman in front of her that would forever mix in her memory as awe inspiring. Bonny's name was only spoken by the bold in dark and dusty bar rooms in Port Royal, weathered sailors curled around their chipped mugs and speaking into the amber with hushed voices. It was as if their words were sacred and evil all at once, and they spoke of a mist that inhaled vengeance and killed for sport, they spoke of meetings in the cover of shadow with a woman whose hair breathed fires that matched the gates of Hell itself.

And when Anna would leave the smithy for the day, yellow gauze taping down still-fresh wounds, she would enter the smoke filled bar and listen with her legs curled beneath her. Will never spoke of the stories she attended, but when she returned with a glow in her eyes his would grow far and away, as if he already knew that he would lose her to piracy. Fate had a cruel way of turning to tides on them, she thought. She lost him instead, and that would never really leave her.

She could remember coming back to the oppressively hot smithy with her head swimming with myths, legends of the sea and the pirates that rode it without fear. Anne Bonny's name was whispered on her lips in the soft darkness of summer midnights and Will listened if only to appease her, she tried to be thankful, but she was a thousand leagues away. The world of piracy had taken her, and when she spoke she seemed insubstantial, as if Will's touch would pass through her.

Jack understood better, and when they docked in Tortuga or visited a bar and her gaze went too far for him to follow, he waited it out. He brushed his fingers across her hand, her arm, her throat, and let her be lost in the spoken history of man. When she reappeared, hours later, he would walk with her on the dark beaches and let her play in the shallow waves and laughed with her and kissed her beneath the moon.

She was gone now, and he couldn't remove her unwavering attentions, those near adoring eyes only he could decipher trained on someone that was, distinctly, not him. He could remember the first moment she looked at him that way, on the deck of the _Interceptor _in Port Royal, when his hands moved and his eyes shimmered and he charmed a pair of idiots into putting down their weapons. That look made his chest swell, a smile rise to the edges of his lips and it was real, so real all his other smiles felt like glass. But it wasn't trained on him and suddenly he felt as far away as she was, unable to pin down the stirrings in his chest.

"I'd hate to be breakin' up this meeting of heroes and such, but if we could _please _proceed with that which we are here for?" Barbossa cut through the tension with his powdery accent, flowered and caked with the restrictions his position pressed upon him.

Bonny watched Anna come back to herself in a snap of unchecked fire she was afraid would consume the young woman. A sneer colored her lips before she checked herself, the grip on her pistol tightening and falling slack again as if with her breathing.

"Will you stop us?" she asked, facing the pirate of myth. Bonny had lost everything years ago, Blackbeard had been unable to take Calico's ship so he had betrayed their position to the British Navy. Calico Jack Rackham had died by the noose only days later, Mary Reed succumbing to fever months after that, but Bonny had disappeared from the record, lost on waves of blood lust and a need for revenge. Blackbeard had wronged her in a way she could not forget, it burned in her like nothing else ever would.

"Not unless you get in my way," Bonny hissed, that haze of red falling back over her eyes before she could stop it. Her daughter, all mirrored eyes and willowy limbs and soft smile, disappeared, as she often had in the past, behind the need to move forward. Her mission was drawing to a close, every long year and wasted moment, every second she could have been with Calico, could have been with her daughter, could have been free, it was mounting high behind her and she had nowhere to run. Twenty three years was all leading up to the next few hours, she would rather die than leave all that unfinished, unpaid for.

"A fair deal if I've ever heard one," Jack said brightly, the corners of his mouth taut, as if he was stretched too thin. "Now, all pleasantries aside, I think it would be good of us to examine and therefore uncover the treasures hidden within that dusty box thing that has so appreciatively slid to its current and highly coincidental position." He spoke with a distance that lacked his usual charm, the kind that infected Anna's skin and made her smile without fail. She turned to him, question swimming in her blue grey eyes until every other piece of the room and their lives and the shadows that built them faded.

"A fine idea, in theory, but ye dare not move or ye upset the precarious balance set upon this vessel," Barbossa countered, struggling to stand as he favored his bad leg. His grim eyes cast across the decaying wood until they rested upon a dusty leather chest, the small box seemed to center the room, bringing all the attentions of treasure, darkness, and pirates towards it without moving them.

"One step at a time," Bonny said softly, rolling her strong soldiers, lean muscle rippling beneath her dirty blouse. Her boots felt forward slowly, mud-caked and old, the leather pressed lightly against the wood and Anna watched with bated breath, the woman of myth taking the first step.

The ship lurched, pitching as if in a storm and Anna stumbled, her hands reaching out on instinct and her left clutched Jack's shoulder even as he stumbled. The Captain spun nimbly, a grace in his movements she could never have, and caught her as if in mid dance, her body pressed flat against his. Jack tried to read her eyes, to bring her back from the edges of her memory, where she fell into drunken history and the hope that she would be able to make it. She didn't seem to realize that she was, her blue eyes finding their way back to Bonny, like the older woman could teach her things about their way of life that not even Jack understood. His arms dropped, the protective cage of his embrace slipped from her without resistance. Jack wondered if she knew he was there.

Barbossa cursed, his wig tipping awkwardly across his face until the white tendrils fell into his eyes and the glare he turned on Bonny seemed to singe the white hair. No one moved, their breath was slow and even and Anna seemed to blink more than Jack thought she should, as if she was battling back some haze over her vision that would distract her. He hoped she'd stop looking at Bonny, stop staring at the older pirate like she wanted to follow her. Not him.

Bonny sighed, her weathered hands shifting on the wall behind her to give her more leverage. The little box on the floor held an importance she didn't understand, but one that left a bad taste in her mouth. She needed to reach it, but every nerve in her body told her not to, the hollow eyes of Ponce De Leon watched her back straighten with a coldness that seeped into her skin.

"No," Jack warned, his bright eyes dulled to that of dying embers, more smoke than fire as he stared at the woman who had attracted the attentions of the one next to him. Anna looked to him, her gaze carrying an openness he knew her to wear after slipping into fantasy and dream, when everything felt new to her again and the real world wasn't as bad as she had thought. "Together."

His voice left no room for compromise, the near harshness of it stilling Anne Bonny in her tracks. She'd heard of Captain Jack Sparrow, the man who had robbed her home in Nassu without firing a single shot, the man who had been to Hell and back, the man who killed Jones through the hand of another. The man who brought Anna to piracy.

So she stopped, nodding slowly to the ethereal looking man. He reminded her of the fey, men who looked to be carved by light-fingered gods and who were given wings on which they flew with freedom. And they danced in time to music only they could hear, their eyes cat-like and honey sweet.

All four stood in the soft darkness and stepped forward, arms out as if to embrace the air and keep their balance. Anna's eyes were on the ground, watching the rotten wood for signs of breakage and the tips of her fingers whispered against Jack's shirtsleeve. He tried to smile, watching her brow furrow in concentration as she moved in time with everyone else. Barbossa's peg leg struck out a hollow _thump _that seemed to bait the ship into moving, they stopped as one, muscles tense and barely breathing. It remained still.

Another step and it gave way to movement, four pirates scrambling to find a hold. Anna's fingers struggled numbly to grip the edge of a chest, but she wasn't holding, her legs losing ground completely as she struggling to pull herself higher. She swallowed a scream and resigned herself to emptiness, to darkness wrapping around her body until the world cemented again as she collided with the opposite wall, pinned down by mountains of shifting treasure, when Jack grabbed her hand. She smiled at him, as if realizing for the first time that he was there. Things seemed to slip away, the existence of the Chalices, Blackbeard, the hero of stories standing just near her, and Barbossa struggling to stand as he slid with boxes of treasure and glittering coins across the floor.

"Up is Down," he reminded, a flash of gold shining in the blue as their minds returned to the end of the world and the way they ran across the deck with a crew following their movements. They remembered a shifting ship and the way the sunset seemed to taunt them, the way the _Pearl _moved in time with them. She grinned, a smile that lit up her face in a sea of sparks he could decipher in only a moment, a strong nod, and they were riding the waves of weakening vines and the grip of the cliff side.

The ran across the deck, Anna jumping high enough to clear a gaping hole through the floor, one that lead to the dark abyss of air below them, and landed lightly enough to rival even Jack's graceful movements. As the ship lurched and rolled, so did they, even as Bonny and Barbossa struggled to stand and copy them.

"Like old times," Anna said breathlessly as the pitching's of the ship slowed and they slid the remaining few feet towards the box. She turned, half expecting Jack to be the only one there, like all the light would be centered on his face and she would see him like she had never seen him before. Bonny crouched down, her loose shirt billowing around her narrow waist as her fingers brushed against the lip of the chest. Barbossa leaned awkwardly beside her, his wooden leg stuck out to the side.

"Oi, why do you get to look first?" Jack demanded, eyes narrowed on the red-haired pirate with the sharpness of a sword, biting and steel. She rolled her eyes, a mirrored blue that Jack thought looked too much like Anna's, too much like the sea split itself and flowed into her heart. But Bonny had a wear on her that Anna didn't have, blankness in her gaze that made Jack think of Davy Jones, and the sick way he had allowed himself to be taken by revenge that consumed him. Bonny was close, a half-crazed look swimming just beneath the blue, just beneath her heartbeats.

"Fine, _together_," Bonny mocked, a sneer coloring her lips. Anna nearly growled, a protectiveness rising in her before she could quell it and hero or no hero, Jack came first. Jack would always come first. Bonny blinked, taken aback by the glare her daughter sent her way.

The harshness, the cold brutality in her daughter's gaze had been unnerving, like she'd stepped into an ambush without a weapon, like the sea had turned on her. Days of dreaming of the little bundle in her arms had passed, and she couldn't pretend the truth wasn't real anymore, that she had forgotten.

It was like Anna was confronting her, that heated glare from her mirrored eyes struck a chord so deep within her body it seemed like God was pushing every sin she'd ever committed back into her chest until the reality was all she could face. Sometime between London and now, Anne Bonny had let thoughts of her child be washed away, she stopped thinking about the little girl who grabbed her finger in tiny hands, stopped wishing to be with her, stopped loving her.

"Tread lightly, Bonny," Barbossa said softly, his tired eyes sliding from the pair of pirates he had grudgingly begun to respect. "She's got a streak as mean as Jones himself when it comes to young Sparra'."

Jack smirked, a wan stretch of lips as his hands reached out slowly, sliding across the chest almost reverently. He glanced up at Bonny, and thought her not as beautiful as Annie, not as off-kilter and bright. "It is mutualistic in nature," he said shortly, while Anna continued to glare with the ferociousness of an animal, barely restrained and all traces of admiration singed away.

Jack liked that about her, that she didn't allow her notions, her childish awe, restrain her from what she wanted, what she needed. And even though she wanted the memories of childhood, the legend of Bonny weaved through the smoke in a bar, even though she wanted what the older woman could give her, she needed Jack. More than air, sometimes.

And he knew it.

"As is our need to be onward," Anna whispered, wishing suddenly that she was far away, on the deck of the _Pearl _with the wind against her skin and her troubles behind her. This time, things seemed to be too much. She had a Cabin Boy and a Pirate Boy she felt compelled to protect, a Spanish tart after Jack's smoldering gaze, a flash to the past they'd left behind in Barbossa's awkward gait, and now the object of a thousand dreams in childhood. And a Fountain that could promise you years, but not enough to stretch the time eternally. Ponce De Leon was enough proof of that, drinking his way to youth for short of two hundred years, until something had gone wrong and now he lay withered, an empty shell of the Captain he used to be.

But she had a duty, something she hadn't felt pressed upon her shoulders since she walked the halls of her father's estate, pushed down by politics and a sense of service. She had to go through the motions of a pirate driven by their lust for eternal sunsets, never ending horizons, and years that melted by like minutes until she and Jack could end things. Truly end things.

So she lifted the lid, her fingers feeling numb as, as one body, the four pried open the old box.

"Rocks."

Jack made the observation, confused eyes narrowing on the two heavy looking stones nestled inside of a velvet nest, and the deep red seemed like liquid to Jack, like the blood of the world was swirled around the place where the Chalices would have been resting, waiting for another man afraid of dying.

"The Spanish," Barbossa realized, his eyes narrowing in something close to hate and Anna wondered if his position was tainting him, removing the heart of a pirate and replacing it with politics and inbred hatred.

"Their ahead of us," Anna said softly, brushing her fingers over the perfectly weighted stones. She knew little about the intricacies of the Spanish army or what their king would want with the Fountain of Youth, she'd been told the newly crowned man was young, hundreds of horizons before his eyes and beautiful in the way she considered Jack to be beautiful, delicate features carved by Gods to make women's hearts flutter. He shouldn't need it, but he was sending his armies to race across the globe and battle pirates and the English and time to get to it.

"Perhaps a look at that map," Bonny whispered, taking her dead looking eyes from the center of the box towards the bed. She couldn't rid herself of the oppressive truth, the one she'd been hiding from in a dark corner in her mind, letting shadows drape across her scarred heart. She stood, a hand reaching out to steady herself against the bedpost, taking slow, even steps in time with every other person, not caring if the ship fell from the side of the cliff and crashed in to the beach below.

Anne Bonny never thought she'd have to face her, never thought she would meet those identical eyes again. She could bury her intentions behind flowered words of keeping her safe, keeping her with Jack, trying not to taint her with the bloodthirsty anger that had long taken Anne's heart, but the truth was worse. So much worse.

Jack reached the map first, the soft bed dipping beneath his knees. His quick eyes flitted over the detailed sketches as his dirty fingers pulled at the edge, letting it slide from the loose grip of skeletal fingers. The ancient parchment felt well-worn and pliant, like hands had been running it smooth for a hundred years, keeping the edges from getting too stiff. Anna crawled onto the bed beside him as the map pulled completely from Leon's grip, and she had to fight back a yawn. The night was warm, the bed soft.

"Wonder why they left it behind," Anna whispered her eyes moving to Jack's face, and something in her felt sorry, like she had wronged him somehow, without meaning to. He seemed concentrated, his eyes careful on the ancient parchment, but his shoulders were stiff and his skin felt cold when her fingers slipped across his wrist.

She stiffened a moment later, almost as a response to Jack, whose eyes had shifted and frozen on a slowly turning skeleton. Ponce De Leon's decaying head twisted, hollow eyes boring into his very soul and that grin slicing through his defenses. He was nearly shaking, his breath iced-over in his chest.

_Don't touch the map_, Barbossa mouthed from across the bed, where Bonny crowded close to see over his shoulder. Jack's mouth formed an 'oh' a vacant look clouding over his eyes in an attempt to push back the pulse-pounding fear.

Anna took the map, tugging slightly to get Jack to release it, and laid it back inside of the dead man's grip, watching bones close back around the pages in a lax grasp. Bonny watched the way the girl drew her fingers over Jack's hands, pulling him up from the soft sheets with touches that spoke of long practice. Pulling Will away from the window at night, Jack away from his charts, prying a sword from the first and a bottle from the second.

"_I'm sorry_," Anna whispered into his neck as he moved to stand, so low only he could hear her. She didn't know why she was apologizing, only felt the need to let the words pass her lips, and the smile Jack gave her was enough to be proud of the choice.

Anne Bonny watched the girl grin up at Jack in response, seeming to forget the world for a split second, one long enough to make her heart ache and her hands clench. She wasn't good at lying to herself, never had been.

"They know the path. But I can also see where they'll most likely make camp," Barbossa was saying, leaning over the corpse until the tips of his wig brushed against the caved-in chest cavity. Bonny wasn't listening. Gone, like her daughter's gaze had been after she had let loose her name, like Calico and Reed were.

She wouldn't tell Anna, wouldn't let the girl know that the hero she nearly worshiped in childhood was the mother she never knew. Not to keep her safe. Not so that the young woman wouldn't feel pressured into leaving Jack to connect with her mother, but so that Bonny didn't have to face the questions, that devastated gaze. Her eyes accusing her.

Anne wouldn't say anything, and her heart would go on heavy and her soul writhing in shame. Because she had forgotten.

Because she was a coward.


	24. Chapter 24

**Hello! I'm so sorry it's been late, but I had a lot going on, really. I barely had a moment to breathe. Anyway, I wanted to give you this, because honestly, I've been working through some horrible writer's block and this is what came out of it. I hope you like it, and a new chapter should follow relatively soon. Thanks, guys, and please review!**

** -Han**

The jungle was Anna's new backdrop, every step she took was one consumed with patterns of greens and browns that were never the same, but blended together until the ferns and vines were just repeats of earlier stretches. She'd seen it all before, but every second was new.

The cover of darkness made each stride slow and halting, unwilling to admit the fear that coursed through veins, afraid of what lay out of sight and in shadow. The sounds of life, the breath of animals and of the earth itself, echoed in their ears, whispers between the leaves, urging them onward and warding them off.

The soft fires of San Miguel fort glowed like the heart of the jungle, beating and breathing in time with the soft whisper of the wind, casting Anna's face in a half-shadow that made her look like part of the jungle. Jack was next to her, his shoulder pressing against hers in an obvious attempt to be closer, always closer, to keep her back from Barbossa and Bonny, both huddled near the edge of the camp with predatory eyes. He didn't want her to be closer to Anne, the older woman was dangerous and ethereal and his Anna would be captivated in that way she was by him and him alone. He wanted her eyes on him, that spark, that quick fire that never went out trained on _him_.

Selfishly, his hand rose and pressed into the small of her back, his fingers drawing a startled gasp from her, deep inside her chest. He grinned, all gold caps and ego, sated for the moment when her eyes met his, blue like moonlight and lightning on black like the night and the bottom of the ocean.

"Do you not care for the infamous Bonny?" she asked quietly, smirking in that way that was only a pull of dusky lips on the right side of her mouth. He frowned, pulling her closer until his arm slipped around her waist, trying to dispel her want to know her old idol, the need to learn everything about the woman who walked in mist.

"I care for _you_," he whispered, nuzzling against the hollow of her throat until she shuddered, her entire body reacting to _him. _He wondered if she knew how much it took, how many stuttered breaths it took for him to control himself around her, how hard he had to pull back from that carnal instinct to take and to hold onto the treasure. Because he was a pirate, selfish and needy and wanting to keep his treasure immaculate and safe and _his. _And every time her skin bruised, his soul throbbed, and he couldn't honestly tell if it was because she was hurt or because a part of him had hurt. He wondered when she had wormed her way so close to him that he couldn't tell the difference. He wanted to know when he started to wanted her all to himself, no one else allowed to see her.

"I thank ye, Jack, I'd thought you'd forgotten about me." Gibbs' voice was thick with disdain as it weaved towards them. Jack turned, his smile wide and arms spread out as if to embrace the older man, but his forearm was still pressed against Anna's back, always there, a little reminder.

"Mister Gibbs, I was just on my way to break you out of jail!" he said jovially, a chuckle rising from the depth of him, pulling through the mouth easily. It felt good. Too long since he'd really laughed. Because Gibbs was back and Anna was looking at _him _and not Bonny, whose eyes were too familiar to him and they seemed to hinge on Anna far too long.

"Ye did a fine job of it, too," Gibbs muttered, dripping with sarcasm as he gave Anna a good natured bow at the waist. She grinned, faking a curtsey for the sake of it all and turning back to face the camp with Jack and Gibbs in tow.

"You stole my map," Jack said suddenly, as if just remembering, his eyes narrowing on his old friend. Gibbs shrugged meekly, nothing to say and nowhere to go.

"Actually, I gave it to him," Anna admitted in a hushed whisper, trying to keep the smile off her lips. She could feel Bonny's gaze trained on them, and the grin spread across her face like the sun coming out and Jack seemed to lose space and time and sense as it all narrowed down to her. "Better that than the crown getting to it."

"Was this before or after I was hit with a rifle?" Jack asked, head tilting to the side and forgetting, for a moment, the job ahead and all the work and sweat and pain that would go into it. Here, in the endless seconds, it was Annie next to him and the humming vibration of an adventure finally picking up, finally taking off.

"After."

"Oh."

Bonny watched the exchange with hollow eyes, wondering if she could make that sweet grin rise to her daughter's face, if she could influence the way she smiled and breathed like she was some place safe, easy and calm, like nothing could touch her. But she'd given that up, she'd made her choice, and Anne couldn't go back, no matter how much she wanted to, under the cover of stars and the thick, sweet scent of the jungle.

"Best be onward," Barbossa whispered, cutting across Jack and Anna's nearly wordless conversation, the volumes they'd communicated through the light in eyes and the quirk of lips. Jack was back against her, his side pressed to her, molded, like he couldn't get close enough. Anna knew things like this were hard to come by, they filtered in through cracks in the ship, flew in on moonlight and the shimmer of stars on the water, where the sky and the earth embraced. So these touches meant more to her, meant everything to her, and she took them, stored them away inside her soul and told herself that jealous Jack was like a gift. That Jack wanting her was all she needed because it was, even if her eyes slid to Bonny occasionally and her mind was full of questions. Jack would always be more than enough.

He grinned at her again, leaning in close enough to make Gibbs roll his eyes and start towards the camp, enough to make her breath catch and her eyes go wide. Bonny was already gone, enveloped in the shadows and the embrace of the jungle. This was just her, just Jack. Just the soft way he looked at her and the shivers he made roll down her spine. This was just them, and she let it wash over her and promised herself she wouldn't forget it. When he whispered playfully, drawing his fingers across her cheek bone, she would smile and they would move on the grand adventure and blood crashing through their veins and quick heart beats. When he spoke, she would tell herself that this, _this, _was so much better than knowing someone from stories, than losing herself in the past when the present was so _good_.

"Olé."

Xx

The mangled, deformed skeletons were what Phillip saw first, around the long tendrils of Syrena's hair and the darkness of the night around them, the twisted bones and tied wrists were in the forefront of his thoughts.

They looked to be screaming, ever-smiling mouths pried open by some invisible force that makes Phillip want to wretch, want to scream with them. His grip on Syrena tightened until he was sure he was bruising her delicate cream skin. She made a noise, half-way between understanding and discomfort, when his hands went nearly lax, trying to make up for the pain.

She was taken from him a second later, and his aching muscles hailed their God in answer, breaking for a moment to find a chance to breathe. Gunner held her securely, watching the corpses of past mermaids in various stages of decay like they were bugs, worms to be crushed beneath him.

Blackbeard watched them with a clinical interest, wondering how many had been successful, how many had pried tears from the mere-creatures eyes and gotten their reward; the years that stretched on infinitely.

"Careful, these pools run deep. If she escapes, all is lost," he said softly, almost sweetly, as they lowered her into the water, her cream legs crushing together as scales spread across them, sparkling like diamonds. He crouched low, watching Syrena hiss and thrash, her body rejecting the bonds the Quartermaster placed on her hands, keeping her half out of the water. She jerked, her tail splashing the faces of her dead sisters, muddy water sticking to their skeletons, sliding off their bones.

She wished Phillip would come closer, breathing hard by the edge of the pool his arms hanging uselessly at his sides. When the put the bag over his head, a heavy burlap from aboard the ship, her chest tightened, her skin feeling too drawn, too tight, like she would have to rip it off to feel like she could breathe again. He was in danger.

Phillip was in danger and she didn't know what to do and she couldn't get close enough to help him. She bucked again, fighting against the thick cords of rope around her wrists until they were rubbed raw, blood curling down her arms in patterns she couldn't hope to understand.

"Look._ Look," _Blackbeard insisted, gripping her chin with bruising fingers and jerking her to face the dead faces of those past. "Staked out to die, to dry in the sun. Only half in the water, not enough to live, but just enough to make the dying slow. Think on it, your people, murdered, harvested for their tears. Syrena. Won't you cry?" His voice dripped with a poisonous honey, slipping sweetly from his chapped lips and cold eyes that made her skin squirm of its own volition.

"All die," Syrena responded sternly, her chin up and lips pressed into a thin line. "Even you. Soon I hear," she taunted, her blue eyes like pieces of steel, resolute and unyielding.

"Can you not hear your sisters scream? Do you not hear them? We need but _one_ tear," Blackbeard hissed, gripping her by the scruff of the neck and yanking up, her body rising from the water slowly, the grip of death sliding off of her for a moment. She refused to cry.

The slap to her cheek had her seeing the stars in different patterns, swimming like they would in their reflection on the water, trying to meet the edge of the horizon, shifting. Her face stung, pain shooting along her nerves and she bit the inside of her mouth, refusing to let the tears flow, refusing to break.

She had to be stronger than that.

Syrena could hear the threats, pushing through her head and making torture sounding too real and too close and somehow, she'd never really considered that they would cut out her tears, from behind her eyes. She could hear Phillip struggle, the bag over his head suffocating his shouts, but they were there, and the unnatural jerking of his limbs was visible, as he tried to pull himself from the Mast of Arms' grasp.

He pulled his body unrelentingly, shaking his head free of the heavy sack until their eyes met. He lurched, fighting back. Once. Twice. Free.

"Where is your voice in this?" he asked, pleading to the only other woman there, Angelica, as she watched her father bend over the mermaid with almost sad eyes, resignation burning in her veins. Her thoughts were not there, busy going over Jack and his mannerisms and wondering how far he would go for the girl on his arm. Why she was so special. Why it wasn't her.

"Maybe she will have a change of heart, when the sun rises," Angelica told her father, nearly whispering, the softness of her voice jarring the mermaid. It wasn't right, like the woman was trying to make Syrena feel safe while hissing through bars, a sword at her throat.

"Aye. She will burn, but I cannot wait for the sun. Perhaps we should build a fire." Blackbeard said it like he was commenting on the weather, his silky voice pushing its way into her head and weaving through the sweet-smelling air around them. He was the snake in the water, twisting and arching elegantly as it lay in wait, charming with its animalistic beauty and suddenly biting down, draining skin of color until lips were blue and hands were slack.

"No," Phillip nearly screamed, pushing himself from the crowd of sailors until he was in front of the Captain, his sea colored eyes heated, alive like lightning. Syrena couldn't look away, couldn't bring herself to speak.

"Do not contest me, cleric," Blackbeard growled as he pushed the younger man back, Phillip's body caving in around the Captain's elbow. He stumbled, eyes wide and pleading and maybe he was begging.

"You will _not _torture her," he said vehemently, the words flying from his lips like a sermon, like a prayer, filled with a reverence and a passion that Syrena had never heard. Hands held Phillip back, made it harder for him to push his way forward, to free Syrena and let her swim away, gone again beneath the waves where he would never see her. Where she would be consumed by water he couldn't stay in, couldn't be a part of.

"We need but one tear," Angelica said, trying to keep Phillip calm, trying to stop her father, trying, trying, trying and no one was listening. Her father was going to dwell in flames for eternity and she couldn't stop it.

Jack was gone, the man from her past only a figment of her imagination attached to a pretty brunette with open blue eyes and a soft voice, and her father would soon follow in his steps and become nothing more than a memory. She was losing this battle, losing this war.

"I will tear every scale from her body one by one if I see fit, if that displeases you, go pray," Blackbeard muttered, waving a hand distractedly as he bent again towards the silent mermaid. Her chin was resolutely up, her jaw tightening and he wondered if she was biting down on the inside of her mouth, distracting herself from the world around her as she staved off tears.

"I was wrong," Phillip whispered, head hung and arms weak, his soul aching to be closer to the mermaid, to save Syrena from a pain no one as fair as her should have to know. "Not every soul can be saved. Yours cannot." He spoke with more conviction than he'd ever had about God, ever had about scripture or the reality of miracles, not even about the young Princess who he'd thought had died because of him, because she saved him.

"Behold, gentlemen!" Blackbeard boasted with a broad sweep of his arms, grinning maliciously at the men before him. "A man formerly of faith."

"That 'creature' is worth a hundred of you," Phillip sneered, fighting against the hands that bound him, fighting against everything, trying to get to her. Syrena's eyes were hollow, empty chasms that he needed to heal, to brush the pads of his fingers beneath her eyes and wipe away tears that were not there, sadness she couldn't express, until she smiled.

"So you care for her," Blackbeard murmured, mind jumping ahead and racing along tracks of forbidden love and twisted romances, desires unheard of. "You _fancy _her. Do not deny what is clear to my eyes." He was smiling again, watching the broken desperation in the missionary's eyes, the shattered soul and needy heart. The one that wanted a mermaid, a creature of the seas, a weapon beneath the waves. "Question is, does she fancy you?"

He leaned close, his empty eyes narrowing on her stubbornly set jaw and caught the way her eyes flicked away, resting on the young man. There was worry there, a complicated yearning the young thing didn't understand, a want she couldn't control and Blackbeard finally had his way out of his curse. His time was drawing to a close and he wouldn't back down now, wouldn't meet Death unless it was on his terms, wouldn't allow himself to fall to one of the many pitiful enemies he'd made for himself.

The ones that had been following them for days, a man disguised as British, and a red-haired pirate long forgotten in the mist of his memory. He knew, he heard every stumbled step through the webbed jungle and felt every sharp breath, drawn-in gasp from Anne Bonny and the One-Legged-Man as they hunted him.

But he would not be prey.

"By God! She does!" he intoned with the air of a proud father, sending his newly wed daughter off to a better life, a happy life. His grin was lethal. "We are in luck. Bring forth a tear, or witness the death of this _poor _soul," he commanded as the Quartermaster dragged Phillip forward, skinning his knees on the rough ground and holding a blade to his smooth, unmarked neck.

"Syrena!" The desperation in Phillip's voice made her cringe, back away, with her eyes rapt on him, unable to look away. "If you could manage a tear, I would be grateful," he shouted, writhing against the Quartermaster, trying to find a way to alleviate the pressure. The knife pressed further into his skin and his breathing sped up, erratic and burning in his chest. He couldn't breathe.

_He couldn't breathe, couldn't find air in the world around him, thick with gun smoke and the scent of blood. The cobblestone seemed red, seemed to be soaking up the currents of blood from the veins of his fallen friends, people that had given him freedom on the seas and had kept him safe after his parents had died. _

_The arms restraining him were unyielding, emotionless as they dragged him forward, his bare feet cracked open against the stone. Their red uniforms seemed to consume his vision, his small arms trapped between the two red coats, Phillip imagined they used to be white, and had been stained by the blood of their victims, so many pirates trying to find freedom._

"_Bring the boy!"_

_The man ahead of him was tall, dressed in luxurious fabrics Phillip didn't even know existed, and his eyes were cold, black pieces of coal shoved back into his skull. A little girl was next to him, only a few years older than him, with her soft green dress stained with soot and dirt and all the things he knew by heart. She was shaking, her hands wrapped around a musket, the bayonet pointing in his direction, her eyes confused and pained and endless. _

"_Do it." The man's voice was like ice, slipping over his skin and freezing it, giving him no room to move and stealing his air as he shoved the girl forward until the tip of the blade pressed into his neck. He swallowed around it, felt the steel threaten to tear through his soft skin. "Do it or die in his place!"_

"_Prince George, you cannot do this!" One of the officers had shouted, horror streaking across his face before he could stop it, his mouth open and Phillip wondered how England's leader could be so cruel, so terrifyingly calculated. The officer fell, dark red blooming on his chest like a dying rose, a small pistol lowering in the Prince's hand in time with the man's collision with the ground._

"_Kill the pirate boy, or die in his place," George said again, his handsome face twisted into disgust and fury, his black eyes boring into Phillip's blue-green. The girl was frozen, brown curls falling into her blue eyes as her hands trembled. Phillip could feel the vibration through the bayonet against his neck, thrumming with fear._

"_Don't hurt me! Please!"_

_He was begging and he knew it, bent at the waist and trying to alleviate the pressure of the bayonet, he had nowhere to go. He was going to die._

He was going to die.

He knew it with such certainty that he managed to block out the rest of the conversation, Angelica trying to keep her father's hands clean, though the red that stained them could never be washed away, could never be cleansed. Syrena's look of broken-hearted sadness reached him a second later, his chest heaving in the attempt to stay out of his memories, to stay in the present, and for a moment he dared to hope.

Her face smoothed over a moment later, expressionless, emotionless as stone and he felt himself breaking, his heart shattering in his chest. He thought of praying. But he didn't.

"Time and tide waits for none!" Blackbeard shouted, reaching for the Quartermaster's knife, the flash of steel drawing close to his neck, dangerously close.

He would learn if his God was real.

_When the girl moved, throwing down the gun with a decisive look in her eyes, Phillip thought he'd already died, was watching this as a wisp of left over soul, a ghost in the middle of London. But she grabbed his hand a moment later, yanking free of the startled officers and running faster than Phillip had ever seen a girl run, tearing through the streets as the George screamed after them, his elegant clothing ruffled and a vein bulging on the side of his neck._

"_I'm sorry," the girl huffed out between huge, strained breaths. "If I hadn't run away, he wouldn't have done that. I'm sorry."_

_She repeated that all the way to the church, 'I'm sorry's tumbling from her lips until she reached the steps, where she looked at him so desperately, he had to listen, he had to believe her, do what she asked. Her eyes were earnest and her hands still shaking as they brushed over his forehead, pushing back the fine blonde hair on his twelve-year-old head like she was his mother. She looked like she was pleading with him, like she was begging.  
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_"__I want you to turn around and run up those steps and into that church. Run for your life. And you _don't _look back."_

_So he did. He still felt the burn where the bayonet had pressed into his skin, the heaviness of his limbs from streets and streets of running, but he didn't look back, not even when he heard the officers catch up. Not when he heard her scream._

_The church doors were slammed shut, and he clung to the leg of a soft-eyed preacher and shouted for sanctuary and he cried._

_But he didn't look back._

He felt the burn of the knife, the caving of his body, the impact in the dirt. The pain. Then. Nothing.

Syrena watched them throw Phillip down the edge of a ravine, a hill caked with dirt and mud that stuck to his white shirt, his hair, his open wound as he tumbled down into the brush where she could no longer see him. She choked, managing to keep the urge to scream inside, the hot burn of salty water firmly behind her eyes.

His eyes had stayed rooted on her, as if the connection between them could keep him safe, skin unmarked and chest still moving up and down and up and down. He didn't look away, not until they slit his throat and he plummeted towards the ground.

She heard Blackbeard order her to be left there, left to wait in total darkness for the sun to rise, wait for her death. And she thought she would go willingly, happily, if it meant she would see the missionary's bright, caring eyes. Eyes that refused to look away from her, maybe so he would never be forced to look back from afar, maybe so she would stay safe.

He wouldn't look at her like that again, like she was beautiful and terrible and ethereal and immortal and perfect. He wouldn't scoop her off the ground with leaves and mud clinging to her skin and carry her through the jungle, he wouldn't tell her that things of such beauty shouldn't be so vicious, and he wouldn't give her his unspoken trust anyway.

Syrena hated that. That she had grown so quickly accustomed to his warmth, his soft eyes and softer touch and the way he spoke with more conviction than she thought possible. She hated that she had fallen into his arms and he had brought her from the depths of her own mind, that she had given her the trust no man had touched within hours. She hated that he was so caring, so taken with all of God's creatures that even _she _could be seen as something precious.

She hated that she loved him for it, for all of it, hated that she loved something so easily crushed, so easily damaged, so easily touched by Death.


	25. Chapter 25

**Guys, I'd really appreciate it if you reviewed. I'm asking for five before I update again, and I honestly didn't think I would ask, since you guys asked for this installment, but I guess there's just been a lull in people's feedback. That's okay, I understand people are busy, so am I, but please? Also, there is an allusion to back story that I cannot wait to make good on, and Barbossa's human. Who knew?**

**-Han**

"What's your play, Jack? Throwing your lot in with Barbossa an' Bonny?" Gibbs asked softly, keeping close to Jack as Jack kept close to Anna and they all strayed away from the approaching members of the _HMS Providence,_ the crew Barbossa commanded, a former pirate leading the English on to fight his battles.

Jack grinned, wolfish and hungry in the darkness, the glow of soft fires reflecting in his eyes, the Spanish fort visible through the overlapping threads of the jungle, each piece slotting together in perfect, living cohesion, allowing the earth itself to breathe at a ruthless pace, uncaring for the men and women who walked the forest floor. Things moved fast, there, and didn't seem to move at all. But Jack thought that if you stood still enough, you might feel the ground swell and decompress, maybe even shift beneath your feet in the slow turn of the world into daylight.

"It should not surprise you that there is a girl. A female," he paused, his lips quirking up even further at the corners. "Of the opposite sex."

Anna frowned, chills crawling up her spine, Jack touching her shoulder but unable to feel the warmth his hand should instill in her. He wasn't looking at her, staring resolutely at Gibbs with the affections from only moments ago slipping off his skin like raindrops, on again off again. She couldn't keep up, tripping, falling. She didn't know where she would land, maybe in the shattered decay of her heart, the one she let be wrapped up and sweetened by the taste of Jack on her lips.

"When is there…not?" Gibbs asked hesitantly, flicking his eyes pointedly to Anna's carefully blank face, Jack's paramour, lover, friend, partner. She was _always_ there, even when she wasn't, echoes of her smile trailing behind Jack on deck when she was below, whispers of Sparrow's drunken stumble wrapped up in her elegant movements as she climbed to the crow's nest to watch the sunrise alone. The echo of her was solidified, her body close to Jack's because he placed it there, they seemed to be feeding off of each other's warmth.

"Perhaps I should say…a damsel. One with a dire and completely relevant need?" Jack expanded, barely bothering to hush his voice as his eyes trailed from Gibbs to Barbossa and his crew, Bonny's stiff back as she inspected the far side of the camp. She still wasn't far enough away for his liking.

"You. Rescuing. A damsel?" Gibbs said it all slowly, sounding out each word as if they were foreign and tasted wrong on his tongue. Anna was stubbornly inspecting the brief glimpses of sky that could be seen through the canopy of jungle, trying to puzzle out the patterns in the stars. She thought of Angelica, and the desperate way she had looked at Jack, her Jack, the man she only claimed ownership to on the inside, where she could pretend she wasn't caging him. Where she could pretend that his moods didn't affect her and leave her bleeding and praying for another touch, another brush of skin because she was lost and he was supposed to be _hers. _

Jealousy was an emotion she was intimate with; years of wanting to keep Will by her side and watching him stumble after Elizabeth like she was the sun, years of wanting James to speak with her with informality and kind smiles and being denied it, months of following Jack and not understanding that she wanted so much more.

And so she did not deny the emotion curling in her stomach, wrapping its way around her veins and pulling tight, crawling up her skin until it was taught and uncomfortable, like she didn't fit inside of herself. She kept her eyes on the sky and didn't bother to pretend that Angelica and her deep eyes made her think of all the other times she was shoved to the side and wanted what she couldn't have.

"I take offense on the damsel's behalf. She has never needed rescuing," Jack replied promptly, gold caps and fondness. Gibbs laughed, from deep down in the center of his being and reminded himself that Jack was _good_, no matter what the black flag on the _Pearl _meant. That fondness only came for few, fewer still with the smile firmly in place and the warm look in his dark eyes.

Anna seemed to flinch from that laugh, the kind of full body shudder that brought Jack around, turning to face her fully for the first time in long, uncountable minutes, seconds slipping through his fingers like sand. His grin turned soft, and she thought of blue skies and the slow heat the sun could push into her skin by noon, making everything hazy and sweet.

"She just needs the expertise of one _Captain_ Jack Sparrow to aid her in the destruction and or desecration of one sacred Fountain of Something or Other, I'm not quite sure, I haven't been paying attention."

She smiled, unwilling lips kicking up at the corners, her hand coming to brush over Jack's. "Had me frightened for a moment there," she tried to joke. It came out too real, raw vulnerability threading through her words. He rolled his eyes, pulling her closer until his lips pressed against her temple, not quite a kiss, only the whisper of a touch.

"Ye of little faith," he murmured against her skin, and that didn't sound joking either. It sounded sweet, gentle in ways Jack didn't like to be. She wondered where she had disappeared to, lost in the strange, broken pieces of her mind. Before the jungle, before Blackbeard and his stone-cold eyes, before Phillip and the mermaids and the Fountain, she would have played along with Jack, smiling and laughing and pushing him playfully. She would have known he was talking about her, before a Spanish woman's voice weaved its way into her thoughts and set her on edge. Anna would have known that Jack loved her, in his own way. She wouldn't have been desperate for his touch and his words and his smile, she wouldn't have been so afraid to lose him.

And that was what it was, striking her in the chest with the certainty of the thought. She wrapped an arm around him, suddenly needing the contact, needing the assurance that he was real and that this all hadn't been a twisted dream, a fantasy. The fear that gripped her soul was unnatural, bleeding into her movements and her thoughts until she was hesitant and meek, a chill creeping up the back of her neck, like the jungle was trying to tell her something.

"I feel as though I may lose you," she whispered softly, gratified that Gibbs had turned away from them, leaving them in the shadows of their hearts, and the certainty that the fight would drench their hands in blood. "I can't shake it."

He could have said anything, any number of equally warm words that would flow over her skin and almost console her, almost quiet the unrest beneath her skin, the fear that made her timid in the face of things she would have been bright in. Instead he said the only thing she needed, the truth that somehow managed to seep into her and make things easier to stomach. Because their lives were not stories told with set happy endings, no promise of tasting tomorrow, no watching gorgeous sunsets from the bow of the _Pearl_. Their lives were harsh, untamable as the sea, they had no certainty, no promises.

"I wouldn't leave you willingly."

"These days seem so much darker than the past," she whispered, trying again for a smile and finding it hard to reach, harder still to maintain. "I seem to have so much more to lose."

"Aye, I suppose we do," he agreed, a hand carding through her hair, pulling her face close to his until their foreheads touched, braced against each other and shuddering their way through the next few breaths. It was quiet, long enough for Anna to think Jack was done speaking. "I won't let you be lost, though." It sounded like a promise.

Her breath caught, stuck in her throat and uncomfortable, clawing its way back. She leaned forward, noses brushing, lips only a whisper away. She could smell the sea on his skin, could feel it as she trembled, trying to reign in the fear, the emotion, trying to turn herself back into the pirate Jack had fallen for.

"Stay close to me," she whispered, breathing the words against his lips and moving away again before she could close the distance, and walked towards Barbossa and Bonny. There was a pause, brief and encompassing, where Jack stood still, hands still raised to cup her neck. Over the hum of the ever-living jungle, she thought she might have heard him whisper _Always_.

It was spoken too softly for her to be sure.

Xx

"What do ye _mean _she's kin?" Barbossa hissed, fingers kneading the joining of flesh and wood, his eyes narrowed and harsh. The woman beside him glared, her face the perfect mask of a killer, one hardened by years spent consumed by revenge, the blood-boiling and heart-stuttering need to end a life. Anne Bonny was not unfamiliar to Barbossa, he himself had moved inside of the mist that enveloped her, had been part of a legend, a curse.

"You know _exactly_ what I mean," Bonny spat, her lip curling in distaste. Her features used to be feminine, used to be beautiful. Barbossa could faintly recall a time when her eyes seemed to shine and her cupid's bow lips curled up at the corners and her skin reminded him of sunlight. Those days were gone.

The sickness of revenge had eaten away at her. Scars overlapping scars trailing their way across her body, marking her irrevocably in the name of the retribution she chased. The lines around her eyes were etched in like the deepest chasms at the bottom of the ocean. Her lips were drawn, tight and unyielding, and Barbossa wondered if she had forgotten how to smile, if her face no longer knew how to mimic the pull of muscles. But her eyes, they had changed the most.

They didn't look like the sea anymore.

"This does not bode well," he murmured, his free hand brushing against the sword kept at his side as if to anchor himself, the other massaging hypnotic circles into his skin. "The fates do not bring estranged mother and daughter together for naught. Especially beneath the shadow of our greatest enemy. No, this does not bode well at all." His voice was subdued, swimming with the foreboding truth witches and soothsayers spoke with.

"You can't tell her," Anne whispered, the softness in her voice making Barbossa's head snap up, eyes narrowed. Her face was earnest, more human than the man could ever recall seeing, since her lover and her friend had died with voices screaming for her help.

"Do you expect her to live forever without knowing?" He asked, trying to keep the judgment from his voice, but too many men who sailed the sea lived without even a whisper of love, a parents smile and a brotherly slap on the back. He had.

No one else should.

"I expect to keep her safe, to keep her happy with that _Captain _Sparrow," Anne answered quietly, her eyes flicking from the soft fires of the Spanish fort to the huddled crewmen behind them, where her daughter rested at the back of the crowd in almost total darkness. "If she would know, she would follow."

"What makes ye say that?" Barbossa asked, following her gaze. They didn't have much longer to talk, Jack and Anna already slowly making their way towards the front of the group, ready for the part they were to play.

"It's what I would do," Bonny replied, her eyes finding interest in the ground. A moment of silence between them seemed to breathe with a life of its own, swelling up between them until the tension made them feel ready to break, suddenly snap on the exhale and be left without enough air to draw into their lungs.

"You don't know her so well as you may think," he said finally, standing straighter in the darkness, not meeting the pirate Captain's eyes.

Anna reached him, her eyes shining with some strange new knowledge, a flush coloring her cheeks. She seemed happier than she had only moments before, as if a sea of doubt and sadness had been swept away. Jack was only a moment behind, a calm contentment in the way he moved, gracefully settling beside her as Groves and Gibbs joined their small group.

"Stealth over force," Jack whispered, dark, cunning eyes casting over the breadth of the camp, searching for weaknesses in the nearly impregnable defenses. "We'll take it from here on account of your condition. You don't have termites, do you?" He asked suddenly, staring blatantly at the peg leg.

"I appreciate your concern, Jack, but I'll be keepin' you company, all the same," Barbossa said flatly, and Jack thought he could almost see a flash of the pirate he used to know. He grinned, bowing gallantly as to allow Barbossa the first move. Bonny stared hollowly between the two, resolutely refusing to look at the young woman to the right of Jack.

"Will you be accompanying us as well, Captain Bonny?" Anna asked, drawing together blue gazes, the sea meeting a wall of desperation and barely-held together sanity. Jack shook his head before Bonny could open her mouth, cutting in with a smooth, practiced polish.

"One more person and we'll be lucky to take half a step without being caught," he said gently, his dark eyes indescribably indulgent as they landed on Anna. She nodded, casting a small wave in Bonny's direction before moving soundlessly after Jack.

"Hold here, Lieutenant Commander. Wait for my signal," Barbossa commanded Groves quietly before stalking off after the two pirates.

Bonny watched them go with a regret in her chest she didn't fully understand, her aging body felt tired, run down under the force of emotions she'd long thought she'd gotten rid of. She wondered, suddenly, what Anna had been like as a child, all bright and barely-withheld curiosity as she watched the flow of life in London from her bedroom window. She wondered if George had been cruel to her, if the dangerous smirk he had turned on her in the prison cells had been directed at their daughter over the years.

Anne wondered if her daughter had been loved.

"She is much happier now than she was," Groves said softly, his young face crumpled in thought as they watched the three disappear into the arms of darkness. "Ever since she met Jack."

"You knew her before?" Bonny asked, unable to stop herself, turning to face Grove's calm green eyes. He nodded, back straightening and gaze growing far away.

"I was stationed in Port Royal under James Norrington's command; they had been acquaintances, and I'd met her on several occasions," he paused, growing thoughtful. "She never seemed at home, gazing at the sea like she needed to be somewhere else, never really _seeing _the people around her. She's changed, battles and wars do that to any person, but it is something beyond that, I think.

I have had the misfortune to fight on the wrong side, Miss Bonny, but Annabelle is unyielding in that respect, she follows what is right. And that Jack Sparrow…together, they're the best pirates I've ever seen." He smiled, the first she'd seen the man wear, and he seemed so young, probably no more than Anna's age.

"Will you turn away from the Navy, then?" Bonny asked, brow raised, smirk on the edges of her lips. She'd seen many men with that look in their eyes, longing for the life another led, longing for true freedom, for the sea, unrestrained. Piracy was a call some men could only resist for so long.

His lips pursed, mind casting back to his years on the ocean, watching the ship cut through waves higher than himself, high enough to blend with the dark clouds above him, rocking him to his core and he could never stop smiling, breathing in the smell of salt and lightning. How he had wanted to jump over and the sea have power over his body, to take him and pull, twist, push, batter him until he couldn't remember which way was up. How he thought he would be okay, perfect even, because he trusted the will of the ocean above anything else, above even his God.

"If the currents take me there."

Xx

The Spanish fort was elegant in a way Anna had not expected, each tent carefully drawn and unique on the inside, decorated with the flicker of candles and worn leather, cherry wood with carefully carved stories winding their way across each piece of furniture. Flashes of steel in the firelight revealed a rack of swords near the back of the encampment, the craftsmanship almost tangible in the air surrounding the deadly weapons.

Dark-eyed men stalked the perimeter of the camp with cat-like gaits, feline strength embedded in their muscles, in their very bones as they flowed elegantly from one step to the next, heading towards the largest tent, where four men sat crouched over a detailed map, ringed hands running across the paper.

A moment passed, with the three of them breathing as quietly as they could with backs pressed against thick trees, and a tall, refined Spanish Officer exited the tent, his perfectly curled hair cascading down around his shoulders and his chin tipped up towards the sky. He was handsome, Anna thought belatedly, angular face and pouty lips set in a grim line.

"There, that one. That be the leader," Barbossa hissed, crawling closer to them, sword leading his way. "Make note of his tent, because that's where- by _God._ That must be them."

The Chalices, two remotely unimpressive silver cups, sat side by side on a long wooden table, their battered shells shown dully in the soft light as a man grasped one and began to polish it systematically, with slow and careful fingers. Barbossa watched them like they were the Cups of Christ himself, split and made smaller and submerged in the silver waters of the Fountain of Youth to stain what once was gold.

"Your sword smells…funny," Jack whispered, sniffing lightly at the line of gleaming steel held just in front of his face. Anna shot him a confused look, taking a delicate breath of her own, wrinkling her nose when she found him right. They turned to Barbossa with incredulous looks, identical in their raised brows and shining eyes.

"Aye. Poison. From the innards of poisonous toads. Just a scratch, and you're a dead man in minutes," Barbossa hissed with a twisted glee in his voice, happy, ecstatic even, to wield a weapon of such destruction. Anna scooted back slightly, mud dragging across her pants and dirtying her hands.

"Would you mind pointing that the other way?" Jack asked tightly, watching the sword as if it would turn and bite him, swallowing carefully. He told himself that his hands didn't shake with the sudden onslaught of ominous fear that washed through him, told himself that nothing could hurt him, he was okay. He was okay.

"I don't like toads," Anna whispered, her voice a breathy sigh in his ear that might have made him feel better, if the sound of it wasn't tinged with the same foreboding as his own.

Barbossa stood, shakily allowing the numb weight of his wooden leg take half of his weight as he scanned the camp with the quick eyes of a predator, shifting his sword to face away from them. He leaned heavily on the wooden crutch he'd been carrying with him since Blackbeard had stolen his right limb, and cursed its cumbersome maneuvering.

"What are you doing?" Jack asked, scrambling to stand beside him, trying to follow the older man's gaze with a barely with-held anxiety that Barbossa didn't seem to feel. But there was something about that sword that made him feel small and clumsily large at the same time, like he would take one step and impale himself on it and lay twitching in the dirt for the next two and a half minutes. Or worse, Anna would.

"Planning an escape route. Isn't that how you do it?" Barbossa asked suddenly, turning the face the man who was Captain first, then enemy, then ally. He didn't know where they stood now, a woman with eyes like the sea standing between them. Anna covered her mouth to suppress her chuckle, praying that it didn't carry in the darkness.

"If you knew how he did it, he would do it differently," she whispered, as if the answer was obvious, as if she had just looked up and plucked it from the fabric of stars over their head. Maybe she had.

"Sometimes I just…improvise," Jack added lightly, already running off in that odd way of his, strange elegance to his flailing limbs and straight back, and some part of Barbossa wished he could imitate that, if only to feel the brush of wet grass against his right leg, the indescribable feeling of standing balanced and even and _sure _that your legs could take the weight. So much had changed, but something about Jack always stayed the same.

Anna took up her position quietly, not bothering to respond to the look of astonishment on Barbossa's face as she dropped to her knees on the far side of the table without being told to do so. She'd spent enough time around Jack to learn when to just go with your instincts and pray he was thinking the same thing you were. When she heard the distinct whisper of metal over fabric and saw Jack twitch away from his position on the other side of the table, Chalice in hand, she made her move.

The man above her sat still, polishing rag in hand and staring at the place the second Chalice should have been, wide-eyed despair worming its way into his mind. Anna snatched the neglected second cup and scrambled back as silently as she could, wincing at every shuffle of fabric around her body.

The Spaniard turned around; nothing there, both Chalices gone. He stood up, chair falling back with a dull _thump _and his mouth open and ready to shout out an alarm that would rival the screaming voices of angels.

Barbossa promptly swung his crutch at the back of his head, sending the man sprawling on the floor of the tent, eyes rolled up in the back of his head and body limp and boneless. A grim smile spread across his lips, and for a moment he was thankful for the awkward support, the only thing that kept him walking steadily through the uneven ground of the jungle.

"Now what?" he asked quietly, watching Jack and Anna stand up slowly and move beside each other, staring at the Chalices in their hands as if examining the value of human life itself, running the weight and feeling the heavy promise of eternity.

"We stroll out, slow and steady," Jack said confidently, shoulders back and chest out in the mock impersonation of the soldier Jack could never be. Anna smiled, looping her Chalice in on the many half-charred pieces of rope and broken jewelry to keep it attached to her hip, and laid a casual hand on the hilt of her sword.

"Just like we belong," she added, already walking steadily towards the mouth of the tent, allowing the fires to wash her with a welcome dry warmth that was so different from the humidity of the jungle air. She suddenly wondered what month it was; time seeming to stretch on infinitely and not passing at all when she was at sea. How much time had passed?

Barbossa and Jack followed her with the same cautious military grace that had been drilled into the men surrounding them, trying to copy their mannerisms with only cursory glances. Anna suddenly remembered her father and the way she was forced to walk back and forth down long hallways until the sun went down with her back so straight it hurt.

Jack thought of the EITC, and the time between being his father's son and being a real pirate. He still hadn't told Anna about that, about the way he watched the _Pearl _(formerly the _Wicked _Wench) sink beneath the waves and Becket laughing, the only time he'd seen the man laugh. That was back when Jack knew how to walk like a military man. But he'd forgotten that amidst the waves and the call of the sea. And Anna didn't know any of that yet, hadn't even known why he'd sold his soul to Davy Jones, desperate and broken and needing his ship back so badly everything had hurt. He promised himself to tell her. To tell her everything.

Barbossa wasn't thinking of anything except the dead look in Blackbeard's eyes, the one he would drive home again and again as his sword passed through a ribcage and into the black void where a heart should exist. Revenge tasted sweet on his tongue, and he could see how Bonny would be lost in it, forgetting the little girl she'd left behind and the life she might have lived.

They made it exactly twenty six steps from the tent before Jack saluted a passing soldier and a sword was drawn. Anna had counted. Suddenly there was a clash of steel and Jack was dancing in his own way, bending with the wind and flowing like water and twisting his wrist in a flourish that left the Spanish man stumbling and trying to recover and pushing back as hard as he could.

Anna didn't have time to help, surrounded and fighting her own battles, trying to reach the calm she needed to make her movements effortless. A spark inside her chest ignited and she was seamless, back to back to back with Jack and Barbossa, cutting their way through to the other side of the camp, where the rest were waiting too far out of sight to see them.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she twisted, narrowly avoiding the swift and well-aimed slice to her abdomen. Another man was there to stop the movement fully, and she barely met his blade with her own, teeth gritted against the pressure as he pushed down against her. The heel of her boot dug into his foot, weakening him long enough to shove back, watch him tumble into three other men. More came where they left.

"Jack," Anna voiced thinly, starting to wear with each vicious jab towards her body. Her eyes strained to meet Jack's, taking a moment to cut upwards into a thick man's chest, scraping through his heavy shirt and drawing a straight red line from his sternum to the hollow of his throat. He might have screamed; she didn't really hear anything.

She finally met Jack's gaze, flicking a moment later to Barbossa and hoping he understood. He did. As one, the pirates sheathed their swords and ran, needing no confirmation, no other words. Dirt kicked up beneath their boots, stumbling and tripping over the rough ground and keeping hands on their weapons.

Surrounded. Again.

They didn't even have time to draw their weapons before men crowded in around them on all sides, a wall of flesh and steel that not even they could pass through. Anna looked at Jack, he at her. Their hands raised unwillingly, palms facing the stony-faced soldiers. She gave a shaky smile, one that ran off of adrenaline and the weight of the Chalice at her side.

"Parlay?"


	26. Chapter 26

**Hello! I got five so I am updating, as promised. There are feels in this, and it makes me feel sappy, but maybe I'm okay at romance? I don't usually lay it on so thick, so please let me know if you like it/ want more of it. Seriously. If you don't tell me I don't know. Thanks you guys, keep reviewing. **

**-Han**

Phillip gasped awake at the bottom of a ravine with a name of a siren on his lips, face first in the mud, barely breathing through the decaying leaves and heavy dirt that smelled heady and wet with layers of humidity. His arms trembled as he struggled to push himself up, out of the caked ground that choked the air from his lungs, nose pressed into the earth and unable to see. His body ached, pins and needles shooting through his body as he forced himself up in the heavy darkness of the night. His arms gave out; slamming him back into the ground as it came rising up to meet his sweaty face.

He coughed, face twisted in agony as he felt for the shallow slice along his collar bone, blood mixing with mud mixing with sweat swirling in an open wound, flesh open to the world's ministrations, to be played with as the muck and filth pleased.

He was tempted to lie there, limbs splayed awkwardly like a broken doll, bleeding slowly from the slit on his neck, to be done with as God wanted, as God willed. But the whispers stopped him, the sound of a voice hollowed out by fear and mistrust, the halting twitch of her hands trapped against his chest when he held her, the murmur of her lips in a language he didn't speak.

He locked his jaw, muscles tensing hard and coiling beneath his skin, and pushed again, forcing his body up onto his knees long enough to suck in air between his teeth. His head was bowed, facing the ground, stained with the trails of his blood, and he didn't pray.

Instead he made himself stand on his own strength, his legs quivering beneath him. He turned, facing the hill, the steep wall of a ravine, the climb into the light. He swallowed, the familiar fear of the pain, of the possibility of failure with no one but himself to turn to. It made him feel unsteady, without a God to blame.

His fingers clawed into the side of the gorge, bracken and coarse weeds bunched beneath his hands, digging into his flesh, scraping against his palms. Phillip hissed, curses passing his lips in a way foreign to his lips, that tasted wrong on his tongue.

Breathing hard, he pushed on, making slow progress as the cut across his throat throbbed and stung with every movement, every whisper of sticky wind against it. Halfway up and he slipped, body giving out against the uphill ravine, dirt and vegetation blanketing his body in the embrace of the jungle.

But he could still see Syrena's eyes, fathomless as the sea he used to chase so freely, lips like and angels smiling down from heaven and divinity in the way her voice threaded through his head. More than a prayer, more than scripture.

He started again, remembering the way the mermaid had looked at him, like she had never seen compassion, kindness, like his gentle touch was frightening. She hadn't known of a princess who valued a pirate boy more than herself, or a pirate that valued a missionary. She hadn't known of second chances and lunging dances of swords at play, of heroism and a smile turned towards her with all the achingly beautiful good the world had to offer. She hadn't known the goodness that people could offer, the sweet selflessness of breathing for another, dying for another.

Phillip would show her, in small steps of sweat-soaked skin and bruises, taking hits for her and tumbling down the side of a ravine when her tears wouldn't fall. Because he could make the choice, because his soul was already irrevocably tied to hers, in beauty and desperation and dry eyes.

He loved her.

So he reached the top with shaking limbs, stuttering heartbeats, and a calm mind, his thoughts focused on her, on saving her. He stumbled in the dark, bracing himself against strong trees for support his God couldn't give, wouldn't, didn't. He didn't know anymore.

"_Syrena_," he whispered at the sight of her, arms behind her head and chest heaving with exertion, trying to keep herself from falling too far into the water and risk having her arms ripped free of their sockets. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, her eyes lost on the dark sky above her, wandering endlessly through the gaps in the trees, trying to see the stars.

He dropped to the ground behind her, knees scraping against rock, fingers fumbling for her bonds, undoing the knots in scrambled, unsteady motions.

"I'm so sorry," he murmured, blue-green eyes rapt on her face as it snapped in his direction, eyes open and vulnerable and so broken. "Syrena." Her name was his new hymn, a prayer on his lips that tasted sweeter than any words to God.

"Phillip, you are alive," she whispered, her accent making the words sound like a song, sung to the sway of the wind and the beat of the waves against the shore.

"Yes," he answered, so much more to say but 'I love you' was stuck in his throat, the words clawing at him trying to get out.

"You came for me." The hushed reverence in her voice did not go unnoticed, warming his soul and making his skin cold all at once. She hadn't believed he would, hadn't thought he would fight to make it back to the delicate being in front of him. He finished the last knot, and she moved to rest her body on the edge of the rocks. "Why?"

"You are different, are you not?" he said with an attempt at a grin. His face was pale, drawn with exertion and pain, and she could see so deep into his eyes. She felt like she was falling, so far and so fast, heart racing, pounding in her ears. His face was caught in her vision, dirty and bleeding and _alive, _and she'd never seen anything so beautiful. "Do you know not of kindness? Compassion?"

She did now.

Her head nodded of its own accord, pressure building behind her eyes and breaking, a dam falling through and water crashing past her senses. Warmth spread from her chest, radiating from her cold heart, wet water dried away by the beauty of the thing, of the feeling. She couldn't breathe, her body feeling heavier than it ever had before, crushing and welcome, starting behind her eyes and catching on her veins, running down to her fingertips. A tear slipped from her eye, a smile on her lips, choked on a laugh of relief.

Phillip was yanked back, torn from a perfect moment by the iron grip of the Quartermaster, his hands bruising on his arms as he held the missionary still, the fires of the other crewmen growing as they jumped the mermaid. White water sloshed in the dirty pool, splashing the pirates as they lunged for the elegant creature, and Phillip could still feel the calm, could still savor it on his tongue.

Syrena felt herself spread wide by the arms, crucified by her sisters for the magic in her tears, the value of her broken joy, her depthless love. A canister was pressed beneath her eye and she twisted, her tail flailing wildly, trying to find purchase enough to sink below the surface of the water and flee. To go back to her life of cold and of empty, where betrayal and love men didn't deserve couldn't touch her.

She didn't know if she could do it, and the tear sank lower into the metal tin, the last pieces of a fractured dream that could never be. She was shoved roughly back against the rock siding, her soft white skin scraping against the rough surface.

"Tears of sorrow, never," Blackbeard whispered soothingly, his voice deceptively sweet and calming, flowing over skin like water. "Mermaids be too tough for that."

Syrena hissed, back arching off the edge of the pool, succumbing to feral hate, animal fear. Phillip caught her eyes, and they were alive in the same way she was, desperate and clinging to the love she thought she'd managed to find, the need and want and desire and safety.

"But tears of joy. They say they be more potent anyway," Blackbeard finished mockingly, standing straight as he took the small canister from Angelica's numb fingers, a grin half shadowed in the darkness. He was so much worse than the mermaid, so consumed by the blackness in his soul he had nowhere to go, no light to claw his way towards. He was broken from the inside out by his own hand.

"Syrena, on my word, I had no part in this!" Phillip screamed, trying to launch himself from the arms that caged him, his heart leaping to his throat and his vision focused on her shattered eyes. She sucked in a breath, daring to hope, daring to let herself fall, to submerge herself in the dangerous beauty of love.

She stayed silent, but she hoped he could see the understanding in her eyes, could see the belief that transcended the devotion Phillip had in his God, that went beyond the soul until it hit something deeper. Something that never let go.

He tried to smile, but the expression was shaky, unstable. His eyes were hard, turned to Blackbeard with something so much like fury, so much like agony and rage rolled into one expression.

"Let her go," he commanded, the demand in his voice bounding off the trees and echoing through the jungle, the darkness consuming the sound and spitting it back out at them. "You don't need her now."

Blackbeard smirked, hollow and evil and haunting. Phillip refused to shiver at the sight, to quake like he had at the bottom of the ravine, when giving up was so simple, and slipping into a void he'd been so sure he understood would have been a gift. But there was a woman he loved on sight, so completely he couldn't turn away from her, and maybe he understood the way the princess that had saved his life had looked at the pirate captain. Maybe he understood the hopelessly devoted look in her eyes.

"Let her go? No," Blackbeard answered, not even the ghost of humanity flickered in his eyes. Only emptiness and hatred. "Secure her bonds. We leave her with her own."

The corpses of Syrena's sisters screamed at her as she thrashed against the men tying her back to the wall, her teeth bared and body writhing. She didn't want to die here, not when she finally felt so achingly complete.

Phillip was pulled away, his body jerking without his minds conscious permission, trying to reach her, trying to touch the mystical creature that had taken him from his faith and into a scorching heat that bathed his heart in the soft fires of a new heaven. One on Earth.

She met his eyes, and she seemed to tell him to go, her chin suddenly sticking up in the air again, confident and haughty, promising to see him again. Promising to be there for him when he came back with her. Because she believed he would come back for her.

He let himself be pulled away, a last look, last whisper of goodbye, a shadow of all the emotion they had been consumed in, a lingering kiss through the hot air between them.

Xx

Anna's ribs protested the harsh bonds, thick rope digging into her abdomen and all the little hurts and pains she'd accumulated since London twisted her senses, forced them to bend around the dull ache that settled deep into her bones. Her body was tired but her mind was alive, tumbling over itself with an energy she knew better than she did herself. The kind of fire that consumed and tore at the pieces of her lost soul and crammed them back together with an unforgiving efficiency that left her reeling and tasting the wind.

Her heart stuttered in her chest, begging for another dance, flowing movements of give and take that could leave her enraptured and barely breathing, hanging onto only a thread of conscious thought while the rest of her was given over to the fluid nature of her sword. Those moments were carnal, animal, and tied to a tree left her feeling like a trapped bird, one begging to spread its wings and feel air kiss the underside.

She shifted experimentally, her shoulder brushing against Jack's comforting warmth, so different from the sticky heat of the night around her that pushed against her senses and tried to make them cloudy. Jack was an assurance that amounted to heartbeats and quick thinking, and the way his shoulders tensed as he rolled his wrists against the tight bonds, searching for weaknesses in the knots. He was warm in the way embraces were, and the way lightning was when it strikes the ground during a storm, electric and terrifyingly perfect and beautiful and _home_.

The delicate skin of her wrists chaffed, but she twisted them anyway, rhythmic motions to match the swell of the sea in her mind while her eyes searched out Barbossa, who sat awkwardly sprawled out with his wooden leg at an odd angle, his eyes seeming to roll continuously in exasperation. She liked to think he was searching the heavens for answers, but she knew the truth was that he was tired and aching and hungry for a revenge close enough to touch but too far away to grip.

"How's that escape route workin'?" she asked as lightly as she could, her voice coming out tense and wired with the same energy still flooding through her fingertips, refusing to let her sit still long enough to take a proper breath around the slowly healing injuries she'd accumulated on the streets of London.

"Here's your chance to improvise," Barbossa quipped back, directed at both of them. Jack smiled blandly at him, all teeth as he rolled his wrists again, the tan planes of his face twitching slightly at the pain. Anna's shoulder bumped against his in silent reassurance, enough pressure to send familiar sparks dancing across his body.

"I'm attempting it," he answered, quietly reveling in the scorching fires their skin made together, flowing between them in equal measures. "I might be able to get a hand loose," he said stiffly, alternating between rotating his wrists towards and away from himself, all in careful movements that lessened the sharp bite of thick cord against his skin.

He'd thought Barbossa was doing the same, gentle, slow motions of his hands hovering around the peg leg to ease the pressure. A slick _pop_ made a chill crawl up his spine, jaw tense and hands shake for a moment at the wet sound of meat disconnecting from wood. Barbossa had twisted off his false limb with barely a wince and relieved sigh as the hard weight slid from his body, and his barely healed flesh could breathe.

"Oh good, you've got a knife," Anna commented hopefully as Barbossa slid his bound hands down the steadily thinning peg until his fingers wrapped all the way around, and the wood there was comfortably worn down, easy to grip. He brought it up towards his face, breathing in the scent of wood and his own sweat-slick flesh. Barbossa's lips wrapped around the cork, weak teeth digging in and ripping out, the intoxicating smell of rum covering the sick meat of his damaged limb.

"Better," he declared, spitting the cork into his lap and taking a long swallow of the heady liquid. It went down smooth, so many years accustomed to the taste, and it didn't matter to him where it came from, formerly attached to his stump of a leg or a few drops sliding off another man's glass.

"I want one of those," Jack said quietly, longing itching at the back of his throat with the reminder of the last time he'd had anything to drink beside white water flung by ravenous mermaids. His hands stuck out like a greedy child when Barbossa moved to pass leg-turned-bottle across the small breath of space between their trees. The older man wheezed slightly, bent in half to try and reach him with the tight ropes digging into his abdomen. The Spanish had done their job well, taking away Jack's freedom with an efficiency that almost frightened him, pinning him down at the wings.

"Here's to revenge, sweet and clear," he said quietly, watching Barbossa's face twitch as he raised the rum to his lips. He thought about Blackbeard, and the way his ship had come alive, the way rope had bit into his skin in such a familiar way.

Jack silenced his thoughts with long swallows of sweet tasting rum, and let his eyes slide closed to a dark world, dark jungle, dark thoughts. He couldn't remember the last time he slept, and his body was running on stuttering heartbeats and adrenaline fueled blood, but the small smirk was still at the corners of his lips, spark in his eyes. They were going to get through this, destroy the Fountain of Youth and retire to the _Pearl, _where Jack would bring back all the little scattered pieces of Anna that had been lost on the journey with all the slow, sweet touches he didn't let himself indulge in in front of so many.

When he passed her the rum, she took it with a soft look, one that expected promises and kisses and adventures. He would give them, all of them, all of himself. He thought she knew that.

"Here's to...tomorrow," Anna said finally, her eyes moving from him to the stars, watching them with interest. "May we meet it with a lesser burden on our shoulders." She took a long swallow, her eyes sliding closed, sheltering the unequivocally beautiful blue from his sight. He tried not to be entranced by the way her throat moved and failed, barley managing to resist the urge to lean into her and just breathe.

"Revenge, ye say?" Barbossa asked cautiously, gaze narrowed on Jack as the young man rolled his wrists again. He nodded without looking up, teeth worrying his bottom lip and catching on wind-chapped skin.

"It's rather obvious you're here to dispatch Blackbeard. If not, you would have seen the Chalices and gone, with or without Bonny holding a gun to your head," Anna noted, passing back the older man's leg with careful, steady hands.

"King George, privateer. Wig. Cheap theatrical facade. Not buying it," Jack surmised quickly, his voice clipped and short as he watched emotion trickle through the careful mask his old enemy had put in place.

"You weren't there that night," Barbossa whispered, his voice a hushed crack of old pain and age that had seen too much. Anna watched him speak intently, the way his eyes grew far and away as he seemed to forget where he was, suddenly back to face unspeakable horrors that left him numb.

"What happened?" she asked softly, vulnerable and reassuring in a way she had never been to him before. Hadn't been to anyone but Will and Jack. The world was changing beneath their feet, enemies becoming friends and old friends enemies. Jack could taste the differences on his tongue, and he didn't know if he liked them.

"I'd stolen The _Orion _two weeks after Tortuga, left with a crew an' didn't look back. She was beautiful, nothin' on the _Pearl, _but strong with the wind. We were off the coast of Hispaniola when we came under attack. No provocation nor warning nor offer of parley," he started, voice gruff and unsteady, soft, like he was speaking to the wind. "We were peppered with cannon fire. And then the sea beneath the _Orion _began to roil. The Pearl was pitching and yawing violently. Every plank, every rail, every spar all at once began to creak."

His voice was a ghost, whispering across the distance and screaming in their heads. Agony laced his words and nothing could cover the crack in his voice, how hollowness tinged his words.

"The rigging had come to life, and our own ship turned against us. Tangling the crew, wrapping around them like snakes. And wrapping around my leg," he said quietly, staring down at the scarred over stump, a piece of himself he could never get back. "But me arms were free and my sword was at hand." His eyes grew hard, vicious and scorching through the darkness, lighting the night with fury and pain and all the hatred his heart could muster.

"I am the master of my ship, not Blackbeard. I am the master of my fate, _not _Blackbeard!" he nearly screamed, his face twisted and voice shaking. He leaned back against the tree, holding onto his wooden appendage with slack hands. "So I did what needed done." Barbossa punctuated it with a long drink, a triumphant look hovering in his eyes. When he spoke again it was grave and quiet, slow and more human than Anna had ever heard. "I survived."  
>He leaned down with practiced fingers to reattach his leg, the only thing that kept him useful and alive, that kept him on the rolling tides of the sea. Jack watched with an aching sorrow that sat uncomfortably in his chest, like a tightness he couldn't be rid of.<p>

"I care not for King George or tavern yarns that give hope for a healed limb. But I'd give my left arm for a chance at Blackbeard," Barbossa said quietly, bolts of strength shooting up and down his words, piracy in the blood rising to the surface. Jack could hear it, could feel it in a universal way he thought all pirates could. The sea had risen and taken the three of them, they belonged to it, completely, and Barbossa could only survive without it for so long.

"Not your right?" Anna asked softly, a final twist of her hands against the slowly loosening rope.

"I need me good arm to drive my poisoned blade through his heart," he answered with a grim smile, all teeth and burning anger just beneath the surface. His face had run free of the caked white powder, sweat drawing it away in slow increments, and his uniform was dirty, frayed. He looked like a pirate.

Jack and Anna rubbed at their wrists absently, shedding the ropes to the floor of the jungle one after the other, and staring understandingly at the older man as he came back to himself, as he shed the mask and the careful plans and became the pirate he should have been all along.

"We'll see you get the chance, mate," Jack said lightly, spreading his arms wide in an early goodbye as he moved to stand, looping an arm through Anna's for leverage. The ropes moved with them, pinning them to the tree and giving them what they needed to climb up and into the darkest corners of heaven.

The night was hot, sticky and sweet against Barbossa's face as two pirates leaned into each other and skimmed their boots against the bark of a rough palm, already beginning to slide out of sight. He leaned back, looking past their elegant forms and into the stars that watched the sea with glittering intensity, tired body resting against the tree. He promised them and himself, that he would return, lost again amongst waves that knew him by the hoarse shout of his command over a crew and cooing sweet whisper to the lapping water. He let himself be content in the knowledge that Jack and Anna were with him, not against, and that the night would end eventually.

The sun would rise, and he would greet it with lighter shoulders, a lighter soul.


	27. Chapter 27

**I am so sorry. I can't believe it took me this long to scrounge out four thousand words. I'm usually much better at this and I don't really have an excuse. But, if any of you are interested in Avengers fanfic, bounce over to Archive of Our Own and look up SinningVirtue. I put up my first story there, and so far I've had a lovely response. Thanks so much guys! Asking for five reviews again before I update. We're drawing to a close!**

**-Han**

"Once we're up, what's the plan?" Anna asked, her voice breathy and soft in the cover of darkness as she shimmied further up the palm tree. The rough fronds dug into her back, catching on the cotton of her shirt and tugging insistently like a young child starved for attention. She struggled for purchase, boots slipping precariously as her hands braced her.

"What plan?" Jack answered with a quick smirk in her direction, the expression nearly lost in the blackness that consumed the jungle.

A roll of eyes, the catch of dim light on gold capped teeth, and everything was back where it should be. They worked seamlessly together, the confident give and take of their bodies against the tree as they used their momentum to push up past the leaves. She remembered the feel of salt air against her face on that first adventure, going after Elizabeth. He remembered the way she felt between his hands, coming apart on the deck of his ship in a kiss that left him breathless.

As one, they pushed the ropes over their bodies, allowing it to pool around their boots as they struggled for balance atop the palm tree. Up this high, the air was breathable, a soft breeze whispering against Anna's face in a small grace.

The trees swayed, and she turned her eyes to the stars with her arms spread wide, as if to embrace the sky. She could hear Jack moving above the wind; feel the rope slithering across her boots and into his callused hands. She let him work in silence, allowing her gaze to sweep over the expanse of the breathing life before her, earth she had walked for years, her boots kissing the face of the world.

A soft movement of their perch made her ribs protest, a hiss drawn in between her teeth, a sudden tension in the line of Jack's body, a stilling of his hands. His bottom lip worried between his teeth, and a weight in his chest he wasn't familiar with.

"You trust me?" Jack asked suddenly, his eyes on the thick rope biting into his palm, the coconut he was securing in the cradle of knots and cord. His body was humming in anticipation, feeling the fall before the wind began to bite past him, before the ground raised its hands to meet him. He forced himself steady, flicking his eyes up to an endless blue that had become more familiar than his own dark gaze. Almost shy, almost coy.

His eyes were bottomless and more vulnerable than Anna could remember. She got the feeling this was him hoping, on the edge of begging for her trust, something he'd only ever taken. Jack had never asked for it before.

Maybe he'd never had to. And maybe the silence away from the constant wash of the sea had made him see her differently, see the bruises and the winces and the pain, and need for her to _say _she would still follow him. Would still sail to new worlds with him by her side. Still be inevitably hurt because of him.

"Always," she answered firmly.

Blue on brown and the night seemed calm, a serene embrace between sky and earth. Jack nodded, sated and worried all at once.

He tried not to think about the mortality of man, of the chance they were throwing away, the things they were allowing to slip through their fingers in a collection of dark marks across fair skin.

Instead he let his makeshift lariat cut through the wet air with the deft air of confidence he wore on his less-than-pristine sleeve. The sound of it whistling through the spaces between them echoed a sharp bite inside his head.

The rope pulled taut between his hands, calluses and scars against the cord with a familiarity that left him imagining the waves in the sway of the palm beneath him. He dragged the rope towards him, gold skin tensing, muscles flexing beneath the veneer as he poured his strength into the action. Warm fingers trailed fire over his hands before resting on the rope just in front of him, Anna adding her own power to the process, making nature bend to their whim.

The palm across from them bent as if in prayer, fronds dipping towards the ground, trailing the whispers of kisses on the earth and tangling with the leaves from their own tree, pieces connecting like the linking of fingers, hand holding of lovers never allowed to touch.

Anna's warmth was pressed against his side, urging him forward with soft insistence, until a step into infinite nothing left him even between the two trees, and Anna was right next to him, her body coiled and ready for the jump.

"_The prisoners are escaping!_"

The peace of the evening shattered, reality crashing in on their chests as heartbeats picked up, stuttering their beats too fast and too loud, almost overpowering the sound of the Spanish army rushing through their barracks towards the two pirates. Barbossa still sat quietly in the same place they left him, staring at the sky, the two poised like angels on top of a tree, the night framing them, silhouettes lithe and feline as they hold balance.

When they let go, air embraces them with all the force of the sea in the midst of a storm, catapulting their bodies forward and for a moment, just a moment, they can fly. Anna can't think of a time she's felt more alive, and Jack feels like a bird, wind caressing wings made of the night sky.

When they land again, it was with the jarring grace of a platform that moves with them, limited space and balance held together by a whisper of air and the dig of boots into the core of the palm tree. They crouched down, eyes glowing in the darkness and mapping out escape routes plucked from a fabric of stars and laid out before them.

"_They're escaping! Fan out! Find them!"_

Soldiers rushed down half-formed pathways, ferns and grass stomped into submission with their constant marching, now kicked up with the flurry of movement. Swords glinted in torchlight, the malicious fire hidden within the steel as they are raised high. Dark eyes roamed the heavens in search of pirates with wings, birds whose flights were unhindered by the ropes that had bound them.

The palm trees moved above them, the swish of fronds against each other in the casual meeting of friends that had never touched before. The choked grunt from above at a harsh landing, the way the wind felt hot and heavy against their faces.

The Spanish charged towards the pirates who leapt atop trees in ways they had deemed impossible, sharing space in a give and take that shouldn't have been able to support both of them. They did it anyway. They defied gravity, God's will. They flew in ways humans should never, crossed the bridge of air into the heavens.

Barbossa sat quietly, watching birds flit from nest to nest, and the careful way a shadow in the corner of his vision rescued another winged creature from falling, hands gripping a wrist and a coy smile in the dark. Sometimes he hated that he was alone.

Sometimes he hated that the sea had eaten everything he might have been and all the people he might have come to love.

But then he would smell the salt lined thinly in the air that meant so much more to him after all those scattered coins finally made it back to that chest, and everything would be as it should. Alone and with the sea so wrapped around his veins that his blood was water and the water was saturated with his blood. Give and take and be embraced by the ocean.

He knew his life, and lived it to its fullest.

But bound in rope left him without the scent of the sea and the call of gulls and the gusts of wind blowing white water at his face. It left him grounded without the subtle sway of the ocean matching time, a metronome of water and space. It left him bleak and empty and hollow.

"_Hold your fire! I want them alive!"_

He wondered idly if Jack thought he would live through half of his stunts, if when he plunged himself headfirst into the fray, he was sure he would come out the other end just as whole. Maybe he didn't think he could be harmed, that the expanse of tightly corded muscle and scars only proved that he couldn't be touched.

Barbossa had grown out of that, had tasted immortality and gotten bored, had turned away from it in favor of satisfying the burn in chest, the uncomfortable ache. Like he'd lost something he hadn't even noticed slipping away.

He was just going to sit there, wait quietly in the shadow of the trees and allow himself to be pushed along his memories and the nuances in Captain Jack Sparrow, when a hand lay down on his shoulder, wrenching him back from all the little things he knew could bite back.

Groves smiled at him, dirty and unkempt, wig long gone and a eyes that had tasted freedom bright with energy. More a pirate than a soldier, more alive than he'd ever seen the man. A knife bit into the ropes that bound him and Barbossa flashed a curious look at him, unsure why he still held loyalty, still held anything when they all could have run for it. Turned tail and left without a word from him or Bonny.

"I figured that was the signal," the young man supplied easily, snapping the remaining rope and passing Barbossa his effects. He stood carefully, the numbness in his damaged limb still frightening, still jarring. His sword was a comforting weight in his hand, grounding in ways just standing could never be.

"Am I to assume you've been persuaded by our dear Bonny?" Barbossa asked, lacking an air of charm Groves had come to expect when dealing with pirates. He supposed Captain Jack's musical voice had spoiled him to any other brutish and dirty buccaneer.

"Her words were taken into account," he answered easily as they made their way through the outstretched arms of the forest, ferns and vines trailing across their shoulders and brushing their faces with all the affection of a lover at midnight.

He felt awake, as though he'd spent the last years asleep, lulled by the rigidity of the navy, walking carefully on a tight wire he didn't know existed with his eyes closed. He was so close to freedom he could taste it, could see it in the way Jack and Anna breathed. He wanted it. 

Needed it.

So he would take it. Turning his back on Anne Bonny, whose grin in the darkness had made chills roll down his spine, he had left his wig in the dirt, stiff back hanging on a tree like a discarded like an old coat. The sea was in his blood now.

He was a part of it, and it a part of him.

They ran as best they could, Groves dutifully slowing his pace to match Barbossa's uneven gait, scrambling around Spanish soldiers, submerging themselves into the shadows, becoming a part of them.

Groves thought he could hear the Anna's faint laughter in the distance, just over the rustling of trees, the conversation of sedentary beings reaching for the sky, and the grin on his face couldn't be wiped away. He hadn't ever thanked the two of them, Jack and Anna, for inspiring this light in his chest, for releasing him from the duty he thought he owed the crown, for setting him free.

He thought he might.

He and Barbossa ran, stumbled, _flew_ back towards Bonny and the rest of the crewmen, allowing Jack and Anna to find their own way amidst the tangled web of Spanish words and steel, the night sky that blocked their path. His cool eyes cast back a moment, and he swore he saw a figure waving from the trees.

Spanish soldiers dropped like flies, eyes rolling in their heads, the whites glowing like the soft, resilient moon as their bodies slumped to the ground, heads aching with the force of dropped coconuts raining down from above.

A grin from above, an arm wrapped around a waist, a rope held again between his hands, and Anna's soft body pressed against his. It made him remember long nights in his cabin, where his sheets would smell like her, and they would be wound so tightly around each other, he wasn't sure whose heartbeats were whose. Times like that, Jack didn't think he'd ever let go, that he would ever have to. That she would always be perfectly safe in his grip.

Without preamble, he jumped, allowing the rope to snap taut and take their weight as they sailed through the air, swinging out of range. Wind sailed past their faces, and he could feel her smile, could taste her laugh on the sticky air. Anna's grip around his waist was unyielding, like she never wanted to let go, like the very idea of being separate left her shaky and weak.

They touched down with grace Anna had never quiet gotten used to seeing in Jack, an elegance defied by his image and perfected in his actions. He was the water, strong and flowing smoothly with every movement.

Running through the web of trees was almost cathartic, the heavy up and down of their chests, the scream of their lungs and their heartbeats as they push their bodies onward, boots catching on the lips of tree roots, stumbling until the other catches with all the rough gentleness they'd grown to love. It was like setting free all those reserves inside of your chest, just being animal, feral, a part of the forest around them until they weren't even people.

They were darkness, they flew in side of it, and stars were peppered inside of their wings.

Xx

Bonny waited anxiously, nervousness a bitter taste on her tongue as she rocked back and forth, her fingers worrying the handle of her sword, boots tapping inconsistent staccato beats on the ground. Her daughter hadn't come back, hadn't melted out of the darkness and back into her life like she should have by now.

She shouldn't have let her go.

Ever.

The regret is sharp and biting, a twist in her chest that leaves her heart knotted and her stomach sinking. She'd never regretted her actions before, had looked back on her life with a distant understanding and appreciation of someone who learned from their mistakes.

But her daughter was an exception, the pain it drove into her was fresh and new. The guilt at forgetting, at letting her be lost in an urban jungle, tangle of smoke and dilapidated houses was clear as the sunrise.

She couldn't take it back, couldn't clutch a silent baby to her and turn back for the waves and the life and the world full of things that could have hurt her and could have freed her. And now she hid shamelessly behind Barbossa's pant legs, her own drive to get back at Blackbeard, all to avoid the glaring truth.

She had to tell Anna.

There wasn't any way around it, and every second spent breathing the same air as the girl who had grown into an undeniably _beautiful _woman was torture on her heartstrings, a pounding in her head. She couldn't keep skimming the edges of Anna, couldn't stick with cursory glances and clipped words. She wanted endless conversation, an embrace that made time stop and lie down because she _deserved _to hold her child again. She deserved happiness. If only for a moment.

And the time was winding down, the moon high and stars out and the fires from the camp were casting ghostly shadows across the jungle, which breathed beneath her boots. And Anna hadn't come back, arm in arm with a man so much like Calico it burned. She'd could nearly taste the way they looked at each other, all pent up affection and a love that crossed the lines of fear and blame and pain and life and death. They had transcended all the things that had held her back.

Anna had grown past her mother's legacy, and she hadn't even been there to see it. But she promised herself the chance to tell Anna she was proud, to whisper that she'd grown up to be all mama could have hoped for.

She just had to wait for the right moment, after Blackbeard lay with eyes empty before the Fountain of Youth, waters that would be tainted with his blood. For when they stood before the sea again, and the waves brushed against her boots and welcomed her home. When she could take the time to keep Anna close and away at the same time, sent back with her Captain Jack and close enough to cross paths now and again.

They would see each other in Tortuga, would trade stories over rum that would flow infinitely, and they would have everything Anne had given up so many years before.

When the jungle starts to speak, the rustling of a waking world and the noises of people passing through the arms of it grew loud, her back snapped to attention, spine stiff and blue eyes alert and roaming the shadows. A moment later and she fell back into her original position, slouched against a tree. She could hear the uneven gait of a wooden leg against the ground, absorbing the shock of a missing limb with every step and knew Barbossa was coming. There were no affected swaying, no graceful, fluid steps following, indicating Jack and Anna, the two seeming to be joint at the hip. That meant the stern and quick steps were Grove's, who appeared only moments later with a wistful look in his eyes.

He'd made his decision.

She smiled at him in greeting, something warmer than it had been; pieces of the cold mask she'd acquired over the years were falling in fragments around her. The young man sent her an answering grin, one he didn't seem to be able to wipe off. It glowed from within him, and somehow she knew, when the time came, he would follow Jack and Anna with the same reverent devotion Gibbs gave the two of them.

"Where are they?" the question slipped off her tongue before she could stop herself. And some nights she wished her lips would just fall off, because the raised brow she got from Barbossa was enough to make a faint flush creep into her face. She shouldn't be ashamed for caring, for wanting to know her daughter was safe.

"Your kin's just fine," Barbossa nearly sing-songed, his cracked and reed-thin voice colored with amusement. Groves pulled back a moment, confusion in his eyes, and one night Anne would just stay up and cash in all of her bad luck. Maybe she'd win something.

"She better be, Barbossa, or our tenuous partnership will come to a sticky end," she hissed, old viciousness, old pirate rising in her and taking hold fast enough to make Groves' eyes widen. She didn't think he'd seen much hatred in piracy, hadn't seen the cruel underbelly of the world that had stolen her heart so many years before.

Well, let him know what he was doing, what he was getting himself into.

"I am disinclined to pursue further conversation with you until your precious daughter has returned," Barbossa muttered, phrases dropping from his lips in ways he'd only associated with Jack. An air about him that spoke of a time before they were enemies and the tides had turned against them. Groves supposed that everyone Jack met caught a taste of him, maybe they couldn't help but imitate him.

"Prepare to move out!" Groves shouted at a wordless command from Barbossa. He'd been conditioned to take orders, to follow without doubt, with a stony face and quick actions. Even if his soul was free, for the moment, his body would follow in the footstep of his officer. For the moment, he would play the part of a soldier.

"The enemy is soon upon us!" Barbossa shouted, turning abruptly on his peg leg, the action fluid and smooth, lacking all the cumbersome steps he'd been taking since the trip began. Agility hid in his bones, filled the spaces between missing limb and ground. He stared past the collection of pirates and soldiers, of enemies and friends, of survivors looking to gaze upon daylight, at two beings he couldn't see. They melted out of the shadows, arms linked and stupid grins lighting their faces. "I'm sorry about the Chalices, Jack, Annie, but I've an appointment to keep. I'll not be going back."

Bonny's eyes jerked to the Captain's, heard the nickname fall from easily acquainted lips, one that had seen her daughter grow into a pirate. Jealousy stabbed at her soul; he'd seen more of her daughter than she ever had, maybe more than she ever would. Had seen her become something more than herself and something less than the baby girl she'd left behind. Had seen her ebb and flow like the tide until she stood strong.

"No need," Jack said brightly, lifting a single silver Chalice in his hand, gleaming in the patchwork of light over them.

"Shall we drink?" Anna asked, raising her own in a mock toast. Her hair was matted to her forehead, sweat and sticky air making her skin shine in the moonlight, making her glow to Jack's eyes. Her gaze was luminous in the soft light, almost silver, almost the color of steel in the night. She was something from another world, grin like a whip, like the drag of a knife across his skin, not enough to break skin but enough to leave raised welts. A lasting mark that didn't bring the pain of every other almost love he'd ever known. She was an eternally living flower, frost that never melted, tide that never turned, wind always at his back.

And Bonny could see it all written on his face. He was further gone than he would ever admit and something in her heart snapped, broke, fractured into little pieces. Because she didn't have the right to approve of him, to give them her blessing, though something told her he deserved it more than any other man she'd crossed in her long years.

"We drink at the Fountain!" Barbossa cheered, sword lifting, catching the light and it was a torch for them to follow. Eyes lifted, masks up for the moment, memories and nuances and thoughts that were true, the ones that came out at night, were put on hold. An adventure called, and Anna could feel it burning through her fingertips, catching on the cool silver of the Chalice.

Jack slipped an arm into the crook of her elbow, tugging her along with all the warmth and affection of someone who had known her far longer than he had, a connection in their souls that transcended a jungle and the sea and the world.  
>Bonny brushed against her shoulder, and in some far corner of her mind, shrouded in darkness and the carnal fear of her father, she thought the touch was familiar, in the way air is, the way ocean spray was against her face. She jerked away on instinct, as if the older woman's touch had burned her.<p>

"Onto the Fountain, no turning back now" she whispered Jack instead, forcing herself away from Bonny's hollowed out eyes, blue and silver that saw straight to her heart. Jack smiled down at her, too knowing, and his fingers skimmed the inside of her wrist. His answer was a sigh on a nonexistent wind, a kiss she couldn't feel, a heartbeat.

"Wouldn't dream of it, love."


	28. Chapter 28

**Ohmygod I can't believe I've been gone so long. Okay, I'm so sorry, but school and other stuff and you know the excuses. Here's a chapter, please PLEASE review, I need your words to know if you like what I am giving you. I cannot stress that enough, I like to hear your praise to enforce what I'm doing and what choices I'm making within the story. Shorter than usual, but this was what I had time for. Should upload again soon. Thanks guys.**

**-Han**

Angelica's fingers clutched at a compass that didn't point north, broken and shifting subtly as her thoughts swam in murky water, trailed on the edge of a name and the brush of callused fingers against her neck years before. Imprints in memory she never truly left behind.

Her steps were fluid, a slow dance on uneven ground she attributed to natural grace, a soft light inside her own chest that ran to the tips of her fingers and the heel of her boots. The jungle wrapped close around her, heavy like a thick cloak and humidity stained the air, made it harder to breathe in and around.

The crew trailed behind her with the omnipresent fear that Blackbeard inspired in them, fervent glances between them and soft murmurs of concern for a pair of pirates lost amidst the fingers of the wilderness in the dark of a night stripped away by a rising sun. Two halves of a whole, consumed by the shadows.

Her fingers tightened around the compass, threatening to crack it down the center of its constantly wobbling needle, to bite back the scathing words that festered in her heart and burned through her veins. All for a woman who stood in the space beside Jack like she belonged there, like the ghost of promise hadn't stood for Angelica for more than ten years, like it hadn't been tattooed by her presence.

It had.

Angelica knew it like she knew the sun would set, like she knew the Fountain would be before her before it slipped below the horizon and painted the sky in an inferno of reds and oranges.

She knew Jack thought about her, dark eyes and the perfect fall of thick dark hair, her body, splayed beneath his in the sea-stained sheets that had come to smell of her perfume. She wondered if he still tasted it when he crawled beneath them. She thought so.

Hoped that when he wrapped his arms around a lanky woman with blue eyes his senses reached out for the Spanish woman he left behind. Who parted ways with a man she'd been tied to with a fog embracing her mind and a crack in her heart. She hoped he pressed kisses into Annabelle's skin and tasted her.

She altered her course slightly, her boots sliding on wet mud and her fingers loosening slightly around the compass, watching the needle spin violently in the aftermath of her thoughts and settling again in the same direction. She wondered why it moved, what caused its erratic movements and the way it seemed to have the answers to the deepest questions, ones she didn't know how to ask, how to frame thoughts inside words. How to even ask such a small, fragile object.

The glimmer of steel, a flash of moonlight off of metal and the pressure of pressure of a sharp edge against her throat. Icy water poured into her veins and stopped her movements, eyes wide in something so close to the fear she tried to suppress, the panic that she had long wiped from her eyes in order to earn her father's respect. To get him to look at her without the dead indifference colored in his eyes.

Her eyes flicked to the swords-bearer, the elegant line she would always recognize and the smirk wiped clean from an elfish face, sharp angles and inhuman perfection. His eyes were a sparked flame, inferno of looming adventure and the need for the heart-pounding climax burning swiftly in his veins. Anna stood behind him with her eyes cat-like in their brilliance, reflecting in the sunlight and the expression an animal intensity. She leaned into him nearly unconsciously, the sword at her hip held in a white-knuckle grip and her spine stiff.

"How is it that we can never meet without you pointing something at me?" She asked with forced brightness, a smirk in the direction of the woman in the space she didn't belong in. The position she didn't fit with abstract edges to her piece. Angelica slotted into place.

"Be content it wasn't dear Anna," Jack answered quietly, his voice a myriad of frustration and exhaustion, the urgent tones of a battle hulking on the horizon in the undertones. He wore his excitement like the elegance only few people realized with the kind of clarity she did, where Angelica could see the way it seeped into his skin and consumed all of him, every facet of his existence walked in grace and blood-boiling intensity. "She would not have afforded you the mercy I have."

"I perish the thought," Angelica answered dryly as twin glares narrowed on her, Jack's body coiling taught like a predator a snarl curling his cupid's bow lips in a twisted expression of hatred.

She stumbled back, mouth falling open in something she couldn't name, something that wormed its way into her heart and whispered of love's enslavement and the brand a pirate left on her heart, the sting when rejection fell like a crashing wave.

He didn't love her.

Maybe never had, and the soft words he'd spoken to her in the cover of a darkness tangible had been lies, delusions of her fevered mind. She'd let herself fall too far, had nothing to catch her.

Anna's face was carefully blank as she watch realization crush a woman who loved Jack in every way she knew how, crass and broken beneath years of mistrust and being left behind, an ugly thing as it stood beneath the surface of Angelica's words and gazes, pitiless and hardened through the years. To her love was the feeling of skin on skin and the slow release of breath after heights unimaginable had been conquered.

Anna found it in the careful way Jack slept beside her, rarely folding her inside of his arms, running his fingers through her hair and dotting kisses on her temples. Found it hidden amidst an average day, an order that sounded like a request on deck, and the way his eyes flicked to hers so often, as if to assure himself that she was real at all. Found it in calluses and sword fights and sea spray and the way he would whisper '_go back to sleep, love_' when she woke from nightmares of fire and the scars on her arms and leg. The way he kissed them softly, drew his fingers across webbed and thick skin as if they were sacred.

She thought that was different from Angelica. More real. Alive in its shared heartbeats and movements.

"The Chalices, Sparrow," Blackbeard barked, breaking Jack from whatever feral thought had gripped him, whatever it was that compelled him to defend her, to stand between them with his sword unwavering and his eyes black, pieces of coal burning deep in the depths.

"Aye," he answered, clipped and dangerous in the flinty shadows in his eyes.

"Oi," Anna called, tilting backwards to shout the word to the green twisted background, her voice undignified with something raw hovering beneath the surface. She wished she could slip her fingers into Jack's squeeze his hand and thank him for the squared set of his shoulders and the tight jaw meant to stand up for her with the unspoken fury of a man unused to the action but devoted to it all the same.

Gibbs stepped out into their crude clearing with a rope digging into the palms of his hands and his back straining with the familiarity of hauling sails as he half-dragged a hog behind him, two silver Chalices strapped to its coarse back, glinting amidst the fat pink skin.

"I see you brought a friend," Angelica snorted, trying to cover her moment of shattering realization, water thrown on her face and a fire dying in her heart, a torch thrown to lapping waves.

"We did," Jack answered, the flash of a smile coloring his face. Bitter and cold.

"And the one-legged man, is he near?" Blackbeard demanded, cutting through the tension with the gentle flow of his words, the hiss and bite hovering just beneath them.

"Why yes," Anna answered brightly. "He hovers with a woman just beyond our immediate concern, but we digress."

"Before we go handing the Chalices over, we may have one or two conditions," Jack picked up seamlessly, as if he'd learned the direction from a script, poured over it for nights on end as he had with battered copies of _Romeo and Juliet _and _Hamlet_, plays Angelica had glimpsed tucked beneath piles of treasure in the Captain's Cabin.

"Name them," Blackbeard ordered, as if he commanded them with the same authority he did a crew.

"Firstly, I'll be having the compass back," he paused, and waved his hands dismissively.  
>"No, no, no, that's secondly. Firstly, on your word...you will bring no harm to Anna, or I promise, on pain of death, that I will end you, drawn out and screaming in a ways the one-legged man wouldn't even dream of." The words were a hiss on the thick air, the slight curve of Jack's body as he leaned in, the grip on his sword now held at his side, white and firm.<p>

Anna blinked, her eyes suddenly vulnerable and innocent, caught off-guard by the intensity that layered Jack's voice, as if she hadn't never considered the possibility that the depth of her feelings were returned. Her eyes opened to the balance of a scale, she smiled something soft, the texture of angel wings and morning mist, and didn't care who saw.

"I'll make no vows to the likes of you, Sparrow," Blackbeard sneered.

"Then let me make one of my own," Anna said, with a ferociousness her words rarely held, a black, pitiless look swimming in her eyes. "If I find Jack on the wrong side of your sword, or anything you command, if it passes through him like the many whispers of the other world have, I _will _drag you to the very gates of the Hell you so fear, I will wring you out over the fires until you scream for a salvation you will never see, never touch. And I will laugh as you bleed."

Silence met her words, a moment hung heavy and the crew wrung their hands and tried not to whisper, tried not to breathe.

Jack watched her with something so close to admiration, Angelica's heart stopped, tripped on the edge of absolute destruction and resignation for the two who would battle their way to the ends of the earth and jump for the other. Something she would never do, never ask of him.

"Where were we? Ah yes, the second condition," Jack wondered aloud, grinning with a spark that consumed. "I will be having the compass back." Angelica shared a doubtful glance with her father, where the compass was a key to a new world of possibilities. "Please. I do deserve it."

"Do you have any idea how difficult it was to catch that filthy pig?" Anna interjected, jerking her chin back towards the hog and Gibbs.

"Not the big one, the four-legged one," Jack clarified. The compass sailed through the air with a curving arch that reminded Jack of the path of the sun, reaching a peak and falling again. "Thank you. And thirdly, Mr. Beard, there are times - not very often - when I do reflect on my heinous misdeeds. Chief among them, and note how poorly I treated Mr. Gibbs, my loyal First Mate."

"Well, now that you mention it," Gibbs started, a good-natured smile coloring his weathered face. Anna smothered a smile behind her hand, pushed it down the insistence of self-preservation. To keep them from seeing her vulnerable.

"Left him to rot in jail," Jack interrupted, a secret look shared between them that Anna understood in surfaces but not depths, a world of interaction that she respected enough to not voice her questions. Jack hadn't told her much of the strange world he inhabited before he washed ashore in Port Royal and she knew enough not to push. "I did. Didn't care. _Still don't._" Anna snorted, disbelieving and certain of a bond between the two men that resembled something like father-son but with the turmoil of the sea beneath them. "But, point being, you must let him go free."

"Is that it?" Blackbeard asked, sounding bored, uninterested with the two pirates before him and their vows, promises, and declarations to higher powers. The possibility of death loomed to close for him to take note of the power behind their words, the fury.

"I think so," Jack murmured, his hand rubbing idly at his jaw as if in thought.

"Quick or the pig runs," Anna warned.

"And good luck getting those Chalices," Jack finished brightly.

"_Done_," Blackbeard spat, the tenor of his words binding in and of themselves, as if he had the ability to forge pacts of unbreakable magic.

"Release the swine," Jack said in answer, watching as Gibbs nimbly plucked both Chalices from the animal's back and set it free, watching it buck wildly, strangely, and take off into the embrace of the wild.

"Perhaps you folks won't mind if I walk with you-" Gibbs started, cut off by Blackbeard's fluent stride as he rounded on the First Mate and snatched the silver cups from dirty fingers and continued on without a word.

The crew followed, hollow eyes of men string death in the face and clinging to the fragile hope that Anna and Jack could be their liberators. Could save them from the grip of endlessness.

Jack tossed Gibbs the compass with nonchalant elegance Anna attributed to him at his most serious, when emotion was layered beneath a devil-may-care smile and a quick tongue.

"That'll lead you to freedom, mate."

Xx

Anna walked side by side with Jack, fingers brushing along the outstretched leaves, tracing the veins in them and watching the way sunlight made them brighter, even more alive. Phillip trailed behind them, his eyes averted and consumed with impenetrable sadness, a loneliness that demanded continuance, refused comfort.

Scrum had given them both a brief summary of events in their absence, and her heart panged in empathy too deep to fully realize, too close to the center of all her fears to touch again. So she slowed long enough to fall into step with him, smiled when Jack let her go with only an understanding gaze that toed the line of confused. He didn't know how her heart had splintered when he was consumed by a Leviathan, hadn't seen her stand on the edge of Tia's house and thought about slipping beneath the murky water. Hadn't seen her break.

"We'll save her. When this is over, we'll save her," Anna whispered, once Phillip was close enough to hear, and hoped her words reached him fully, broke through the pain like Will had when she needed it.

"How can you know? What if she is already lost?" he asked, voice bordering on hysteria and she never understood love at first sight, but she could respect the endlessly consumed look in his aqua eyes.

"We will still bring her back. I've done it before," she answered quietly, her eyes tracing patterns on Jack's back. "I've been over the edge and back, because I loved a man I couldn't save."

"You risked all of that for Sparrow?" he asked, confused and nearly awed by the conviction in her voice.

"Of course I did," she said, as if it were obvious, as if there was no other answer. "He was taken from me before I'd even begun to realize how much he meant, how much space he took up in the world I'd created for myself. When he was gone, there was no other choice. Either I brought him back or I joined him."

She knew Jack was listening, only a step ahead of them, he had to be. And she was almost relieved, grateful she could finally rid herself of the weight of what she might have done, had Will not been there to pull her back from an edge she would have willingly jumped from.

"And you would risk the same for me?" Phillip asked, wrapped up in astonishment that defied everything he'd ever known about people. She seemed to always be an exception.

"I haven't saved you to live a life doomed to loveless agony," she answered simply, smiling. "I like to think I'm a better person than that."

Xx

A drop defied gravity, pressed up on the edge of a leaf and tried to launch itself into a light blue sky and a sun that called to it, clear water that wanted to rejoin the sky.

Jack caught it like a thimble on his fingertip, topped it on a smudge of dirt and the beginnings of his fingerprints, and he let it slide down his finger with the slow rotation of his hand to bend it to his will. It ran across the gleaming face of his favorite ring and on to the next finger, playing with it with the bright interest of the child he never fully left behind, saw glimpses of in the slow moments.

He smiled, felt Anna's gaze settle on his face as he let the drop escape him and float up, wished he could pass it on to the tip of her small nose, draw it down against its will to the curve of her lips and then kiss it away.

But not beneath the suddenly furious gaze of Angelica, finally come to realize how little affection he held for her, the smoke left from a candle long gone out.

"Knew it was here somewhere," he said brightly, staring past Anna's tender gaze, a blue he could fall into, to an intricate carving above a deep cave that yawned in darkness like the mouth of Hell. The same symbol from the Spanish map he'd glanced over when they'd snatched the Chalices. He smiled, curve of his lips inviting in a way he knew drove Anna's heart to beat faster. He liked having an effect on her, same as the chills the sea during a storm gave her.

"I never doubted you."

The cave itself was dripping with the collected water of the humid air around it, solidified and singing as fat beads fell from the ceiling and into puddles below, their own music filling the cavern, accented by the heeled steps of the men and the metallic clang of swords against hips or in hands.

The soft glow of torches sent golden light into far-flung corners and shadows danced like the girls in Tortuga, sensual and sweet. A bird flew in from the sunlight and sang softly, bringing a soft look to Anna's face, the reminder of the bird who stood beside her with strong shoulders and bright eyes.

Stalactites and stalagmites jutted from ground and ceiling, spires threatened their very existence as a band of pirates infringing on a delicate balance with their brutish glee. A piece broken from the bottom, one falling from the top, impacting a fleshy shoulder, roll of eyes into a skull and the dead weight of a nameless man as he fell lifeless to the ground.

Everyone stopped, staring back at where the body had once stood, the empty space speaking more than he ever had.

"We must not stop," the Quartermaster murmured, turning his marred and tattooed face away from the dead-eyed stare of the fallen man and looking forward.

They moved on, each step echoing in the half-darkness, the brush of Jack's arm against hers as they kept in stride with the other.

The torch waved uncountable minutes later, swiping across an expanse of blank wall, finding no crack or crevice to exploit, no hidden passage. Only the end.

"Ah! Dead end," Jack declared brightly, already turning to face the rest of the party.

"Dead end?" Blackbeard snapped, a threat flavoring his words.

"Dead end," Anna repeated, grinning.

"Jack. I'm starting to think you don't know where you're going," Angelica remarked, bitterness lining her tone like salt in the ocean lined the water, thick and so hard to separate.

"It is not the destination so much as the journey, they say. Chalices, if you please," he said dismissively, hand out and gaze averted from the Spanish woman and the anger that rolled in her chest.

Blackbeard passed them with visible reluctance, his firm grip lingering even as Jack's fingers wrapped around it. He passed one to Anna, and her eyes swept the lip of the goblet turning it quickly in her hands before catching on a word in a language unspoken. Jack caught the movement of her gaze, found his own transcription and grinned, knew it would have taken him a moment longer under the eyes of the crew to see it himself.

They toasted, eyes trained on the other and the echo of its high-pitched ring rebounding off the walls of the cave, consuming the pirates surrounding them with chills and the sound of pounding heartbeats. Anticipation. Anna spoke as the noise died down and faded to the distance, Jack not a moment after.

"Aqua."

"De Vida."

And the walls around them began to stir.


	29. Chapter 29

**Getting close to the end, guys. Review review review reviewwwwwww**

**-Han**

Something akin to thunder borne from the depths of magic itself tore through the walls, rumbled in the voice of ancient gods until it filled Anna's thoughts from the inside and set them to the tenor of broken skies. She shifted to ground herself, fingers grazing Jack's in the half-light, closed-in chill of the cave and warmth spread between them, her breathing picking up with a crescendo of sound like the seas splitting from the bottom.

Water chased the sky, ran up in delicate veins, caught the dull glow of torchlight and sparkled like tendrils of diamonds spun out on the ceiling of the cave in glittering trails of splendor. Anna watched them spiderweb across the rock with wonder in her eyes, the blue in them a shock of sky and lightning wrapped into awe, split and framed by lashes that nearly brushed her cheekbones when she blinked.

Jack watched her, no interest for the silver pool forming over their heads, or the strange way its rounded edges looked elevated, drawn away from the surface like the water was still reaching out, begging for their touch, something to slip against in more perfect rain drops, tracks of tears, splash of the sea. He watched her eyes reflect the platinum shine on the ceiling and her skin absorb torchlight and reflect it back in soft gold, watched her lips twitch into a small, secret smile. Her fingers danced against the handle of her sword reflexively, as if the action was the only thing keeping her on the ground as earth-splitting thunder ripped through the scattered collection of pirates and left them weak at the knees.

The Cabin Boy caught the bare edges of her gaze, and her smile grew, broke into a grin full of light and the sound of warring angels and a strange sort of music felt through their veins, swelling up from the center of them and whispering warmth across their souls. The little boy smiled back, hesitant and vulnerable and Jack thought about how it felt to have that grin turned on him, like breathing for the first time and she was telling you something so special, only you deserved to know, you were brighter than the sun, the air itself as it wrapped around her and breathed life into her body, the sunshine as it laid gold onto her skin.

You were everything she could ever need for a moment, so special the rest of the world faded away.

Jack hoped the boy remembered that smile, hoped he pressed it deep inside the folds of his heart and kept it safe, like pressed flowers between the aging pages of his favorite poetry books.

The sound faded away with the last whisperhum of the walls and the last drop of silver water pooling over their heads. Peace broke in their hands, crumbled away in pinched ash and the fevered expressions on every pirate's face, Phillip at the back wearing interest and an aching sort of sadness that seemed to bleed through the air immediately surrounding him, that same look that haunted Anna's steps even after they'd crossed back into the real world. Jack thought of the dark way Anna was when she found him, kept a promise with a stain on her heart and a black void she refused to talk about, even in the months that followed.

He asked her, once, what it was like after he died, and the blackness that swept up her eyes in response, the grim twist of her mouth and the way she grew far and away, like the veil still separated them. It made him drop the question, pull her into his arms and listen to their heartbeats mingle in rhythm and remind them that they were still alive.

The frenzied silence consumed, infected, drove them back to reality, where a pane of water-glass hung above their heads and Blackbeard's eyes struck hard with cruelty and impatience. Something snapped into place, the urgency back in their systems, twins at the soul in the way they responded, a quick meeting of eyes and a smirk that pulled the corners of his lips.

She dropped to her knees, wetness of the floor seeping into the fabric of her trousers, scum and grime staining them with the vile flavor of the earth, but the small smile on her lips remained, her eyes even with the maroon scarf tied loosely around his thin waist. She leaned back to meet his eyes, winked at the flushed look his cheeks _almost_ took, the whisper of shame lost so long ago amidst the waves, and the heat, tangible in the air around them, crawling up his spine. Her fingers linked in a steady cradle, ready to let Jack take the first step, to sink again beyond a veil and she wished, with everything she was, that they could go together.

His boot smeared dirt across her open palms, catching on the calluses and making her feel seeped in the cold, dank water of the cave. He hovered for a moment, full weight on the floor and his sword raised high and ready to prick the expanse of water-sky.

"On the other side, then?" he asked softly, gold caps catching the flickering torch light.

"The other side," she agreed softly, her eyes fractured and splintered to Jack's gaze.

What wasn't said went unspoken.

_Please be right behind me._

_I'm not leaving you._

She shifted abruptly, before Jack could read the pain there, heaving as suddenly and forcefully as she could, and lifting him up towards the cave ceiling. For a moment, singular in its perfection, Jack looked like he was flying, dancing in the palms of Anna's hands with his sword raised, slicing through the cold air until it just pierced the water.

And he was gone.

Swallowed by the veil and they were separate again. Jack tried not to think about the way the water-not-water glided across his skin like the cold touch of a Death easy to fall into, how warm and small he felt in the hands of magic, of eternity. How insignificant.

When he landed, it felt like breathing after his head had been held underwater, and the mist wrapped tightly around his heart and made him think of every moment he'd ever loved, every morning he'd ever watched the sun rise and thought it beautiful, every midnight when the stars mapped out the infinite, and every touch of warm skin on skin, every heartbeat held in tune against his own. He thought about the times his dirty fingers left trails over Anna's skin, and her scars felt like magic and history and all the imperfect pieces of her that made her diamond, perfect and pure.

He thought about the cold touch of death avoided once and how skin would turn cold, lips blue and unyielding to his, when her heart would fall silent and that grin would freeze into something dark and-

dead.

The years would go faster than he could handle, they would slip in a flurry of sweet nights and color-burst mornings and raids and gunshots and _he couldn't stop the time_. Couldn't slow it down and breathe it in, savor the scars and the lack of lines around her eyes, the way her lips twitched before they kicked all the way up into a smile, the way her calluses felt when they dragged against his own, the way her fingertips mapped out his own history and the way her lips always paused over the two bullet holes over his heart.

And one day there wouldn't be anyone to hold anymore.

He choked on his air, the cold, desperate way mist clung to him, suffocated him, and stumbled forward with only the ghost of grace, sword at the ready and praying for the Fountain, for Anna to drink from it and be whole, be untainted for just a little while longer. Be safe.

The oasis lived in shadow, darkness cast on mystery made it up in small rays of sunlight and the outstretched hands of twisting vines and the trunks of trees that must be ancient, bigger than anything Jack had ever seen and curving, bent towards a center, where water twined between arching roots and rocks in vein-like patterns. Clear and pure and attracting everything in the enclosure, until the vines seemed to be aching to touch it, moss growing down onto the bottom of the creek and the trees bent as if in prayer to just skim the surface.

He walked, took small steps because a rope around his chest urged him on, bade him to jump lightly from perch to perch, where his boots smeared dirt on the pristine surface of blue stones and his sword caught the small fractions of light and cast the glare on the rock wall. If he looked up, he knew the sky wouldn't be there, too swept up in mist and tree tops. Nothing else existed. And something cold wrapped around him, yanked him forward with the same, horribly fascinating, insistence that a hundred and eighty pieces of Aztec gold had, more than two years ago.

He walked, because he had to.

Because he couldn't stop the want.

And there was possibility, there, just beyond the horizon of thought where humanity would evolve and he alongside it, watch callused hands rise from tyranny and build castles that scraped against the sky, discovered what lie inside of stars and sing anthems of the people. And he could watch it all, if he cast of the shackles of a Death imminent.

In some corner of his mind, he recognized Anna's sharp intake of breath, knew the way her lips would form around the invasion of air and her chest would stutter around shock, awe, some kind of religion inside of it all.

He turned, and wondered what she saw in his eyes, what strange new light glimmered inside the darkness, for her to walk to him so quickly, run her fingertips across his jaw that way, look so desperate.

"That life, that eternity, cannot be gained like this," she whispered, too low for anyone else to hear, as more pirates invaded the suspended oasis, the noise of their frenzied breathing shattering the tranquility. "It would make us no better than the scum of the earth, just longer lived. If we are to take that, what would be the point of living?"

He grinned, leaning just so into her touch, and allowing the warmth, the certainty, to seep into him. She was happy like this, she didn't need eternity.

"You."

"You compliment me so, Captain Sparrow," she whispered, a smile hovering on the corners of her lips. "But I'm afraid your priorities are not in order."

"Is that so?"

"Rum, Captain, rum for an eternity of horizons," she said seriously.

He laughed, full and breathless, and his hand stained her shirt as he held onto her.

"Aye, certainly the only reason to continue on in life," he said strongly, chuckles breaking through the veneer and for a moment, they were alone. For a moment, they were whole.

"It's so beautiful," Angelica whispered, shattering their peace with the soft ebb and flow of her Spanish lilt. As one being, Jack and Anna found the fountain, the delicate stream of water flowing eternally from an unbroken circle of rock, an overarching symbol of all lives touched by its infinite. They moved like they were made to be there, like all their lives added up to the moments between them and the Fountain of Youth.

When Jack touched the small, vulnerable stream of water with the tip of his finger, he felt soaked in something clean, sweet and sharp on the edges with its ability to take life, just as much as give it. His hand came away spotless, unsoiled by time and the skin itself seemed younger with the delicate golden hue of young adulthood.

"I'll be the first to taste those waters, Sparrow," Blackbeard barked, as he moved gracelessly towards them, the air around him bending to his movements, shadows receding into other shadows, and his path forged by brute force, lacking the faerie grace Anna and Jack possessed when they moved with their surroundings. It seemed a trait accumulated through water, belonging to the sea made you a drop in its swell, dancing around rocks and whispering against the shore.

A moment, passed with the bated breath of exhausted sailors and the slow, acknowledging glance between two lovers, a gentle orientation around the other. And then.

"_Father_," Angelica warned, voice colored with a fear that seeped deep into her bones.

"The one-legged man," Blackbeard said without turning, his head bowed in preparation, for blood staining the waters of purity. "And our dear friend—Bonny."

"How ever did you know?" Anne drawled, her sword catching the interspersed rays of light. Jack watched the older woman smirk, thought he recognized the way her lips twitched before the smile broke out.

"_You _led them here!" Angelica accused, snarling into Jack's face with all the fury of a woman scorned, lip curling in disgust.

"Why would we do that?" Anna asked, voicing Jack's opinion with a carefully blank look settling over her blue eyes, blotting out the sun inside of them, the spark of mischief that wouldn't play here.

"Edward Teach!" Barbossa's voice echoed hollowly inside the haven, as he emerged slowly from the wall of fog, stepped out of the mist with a band of British soldiers, Groves walking confidently beside him with his powdered wig left long behind in the embrace of jungle. His uniform was ripped, dirtied and soiled by the touch of insanity the mission had infected his heart with. His eyes were wild, a grin spread across his face with all the vicious glee Jack recognized in himself.

Anne Bonny stood on Barbossa's other side, her eyes trained on Blackbeard with the feral intent of a predator, what felt like life-long hatred culminating in one look that seemed to tear through the illusion of magic, of fey-touched ground. Left it scorched and broken.

"For crimes committed on the high seas, by the authority granted to me by His Majesty the King, with a goodly amount of personal satisfaction, I hereby place you in the custody of the court, and declare you to be my prisoner," Barbossa declared, a twisted smile on his aging face.

"My trick's out, is that it?" Blackbeard asked, his ringed fingers dancing lightly on the hilt of his sword.

"Such crimes do include but are not limited to: piracy, treason, murder, torture of the most heinous sort, including the brutal theft of one used, twisted, _hairy right leg_!" he shouted, brandishing his sword with the exquisite slide of metal, the poisonous steel trained on its greatest enemy.

"You _dare _face this sword?" Blackbeard asked quietly, that soft deadliness lingering in his voice as he slowly drew his own weapon, the heavy mass of lethal sword acting as an extension of his arm.

"This far away from your ship? Aye," Anne spat without fear, all traces of it burned away with the hot anger of maltreatment, injustice. "You are no more than us, here."

"Aye. That be the cold breath of Fate I feel down my nape. But - I'll have one last fight, by God! _Kill them all!_" he screamed, shouts echoing off the rock walls as weapons were raised, war cries shouted, profanities screamed.

"_Whoah, whoah, hang on a minute!_" Jack shouted, hands raised in surrender.

Men stopped, so close to their first steps and the beginnings of bloodshed that would always stain the heavenly altar of immorality. Maybe even destroy its magic.

"I just...I just need to understand something," he said lightly, taking off-kilter steps towards the center, Anna following almost unconsciously. "Right, so. You will fight against them," he said slowly, pointing from Barbossa to Blackbeard.

"And _you _will fight against _them_," Anna added, pointing from Blackbeard to Barbossa and Anne.

"All on account of-"

"_Him _wanting to kill _him_," they said together, pointing towards opposite sides with incredulous expressions.

"Where is the sense?" Anna asked Jack.

"Exactly. I say, let them fight each other!" Jack added, taking careful steps towards Scrum, who nodded vigorously. Anna smiled, swept her hands to encompass the whole of them.

"While we lay back, and watch," Anna said with a smile, sweeping her hands to encompass the whole of them.

"And have a drink," Jack added seriously.

"Place some wages?" Anna suggested, looking to Jack for confirmation with that fire burning in her eyes.

"Eh?" Jack asked the crowd.

"Aye." Scrum said after a moment, lowering his sword with deliberate slowness.

The silence consumed, and Anna edged towards the break in the crowd, where she could avoid the first onslaught of inevitable attack. Jack followed, with all the brazen confidence she loved in him, each step rebounding off the stone and absorbed by the Fountain itself.

"Anna, this is not your fight," Bonny said tersely, her lips a thin line and a parental strictness in her stance, one Anna had seen reflected in her father when anger took him at the soul. "Step away."

"Your battles will cost the lives of everyone in this room before you give up a petty feud," Anna snapped in response, eyes narrowed. Jack flanked her, kept a charming smile fixed on Barbossa as the women distracted, bought more time even if they didn't know it.

"He took _everything from me!_ If it wasn't for him, maybe I would have been able-" Bonny stopped abruptly, swallowed down her words. They tasted like bile and fear, all the words she never said, could never say. Her face hardened, all traces of sympathy erased, and her back straight, sword raised and a snarl curling her lips. She turned back to her crowd, Barbossa a solid presence beside her and the privateers at the ready. "_Kill them!" _Bonny shouted, her voice a frenzied scream and a desperate prayer and _need_.

"_No quarter!"_ Blackbeard roared.

Three swords clashed, the force of it sending waves through privateer and pirate alike, and it made them vicious, made them bloodthirsty and animal.

The battle began.

Anna wished the enemy was of the same nature as Davy Jones' men, where the twisted, malformed bodies didn't seem human, and their empty faces seemed more like a blessing than the curse of dead men trampled by the living, faces open and yearning for another breath, just one more breath.

They were too real, too warped with agony and human pain, unmistakable in every single line of their faces, men with eyes that saw nothing but so horrible in their last moments, felt something so painful, that the fear was etched into the lines around their eyes and the anguish eternalized in their slack jaws and splayed limbs.

And she couldn't pretend them to be enemies, couldn't slide them into a pocket of monsters, where ugly, twisted things could be faced with virtue at her back. Where her choices were right. Where her and Jack did what they had to do and no one had to get hurt, no one that was really human, really alive.

Not like this.

Never really like this, with eternity on the line and a feud that should be personal. A battle that should be between three, without this many bodies, the stink of death hung heavy in such perfect air.

"I fear the result of this," Anna whispered to Jack, as their bodies coiled with the familiar energy of a fight, battle, where the rules were simple and the consequences immeasurably steep. The goal was easy: stay alive. But she didn't know if they would make it this time.

"I cannot say I don' share your worries," Jack answered truthfully, his dark eyes tracing the chaos, screams, writhing of bodies trying desperately to make it to the next sunrise, to see the red and gold shoot across the sky and feel immersed in life, and breathing. To drink again, to laugh.

"Till the end, then?" she asked, knocking shoulders with him lightly. Her eyes looked haunted, as she followed Bonny in the center of the fray, all snarling lip and wild eyes, hair a tangle around her face and her movements unrestrained. Chaos. Dangerous.

Jack nodded, lips pursed slightly, and bumping her back. It wasn't a kiss, the twine of fingers, or even the press of foreheads braced against each other. But it would do.

"Till the very end."


	30. Chapter 30

**Okay, so, well. This is…an interesting thing. This is where all my plot culminates, not gonna lie. I've worked in the things I have for a reason, so, I hope you catch them all. Any guesses to the twist? Tell me what you think it is in a review! Which you should not forget to do. Seriously.**

**-Han**

He felt like water.

All the pieces that made him up slipped away in that transcendent flurry of movement that spoke of tide and the sea in a storm, rocking through the swell and twisting with the wind. A weight at his back, Anna, moving in a mirror to him. Her hair splayed out in the air as she turned sharply, parried a sword easily and slicing deep into the meat of the man's arm, her blue eyes a hard fire, unrelenting diamond, a tinge of sadness coloring the corner of her mouth.

She didn't want to be enjoying this, this carnage, this bloodshed. But she was pirate in the blood and a fight never failed to make a heartbeat faster, to pull her to the edge of everything and threaten to shove her off with the rough insistence of blood pounding through her veins and excitement burning goose bumps and ecstasy across her skin.

He was the same. Didn't even care who they were fighting anymore, just that he finally felt alive, pushed out of the fog the jungle had cast on him and seeing everything real. In that startling clarity near-death always seemed to give him, where he could count the rays of sunlight that made it through the mystical hands of the oasis, where he stored away the last noises of dying men and delighted in the sick roll of his stomach at the thought.

They were still human, just caught up in the energy of it all.

It wasn't about the stalled heartbeats or the gaping-mouthed prayers, it was just moving in and out of the twist of bodies like they belonged there, forward, twist, step back, thrust. Jack was taken up from the inside and drawn out by the need to push forward, the weight of his sword making it all the more real as dying men gave him their last gaze, last pleas. He was dancing because he had to, because they had nowhere else to go with the Fountain looming ahead of them and three leaders clashing in the heart of the writhing mass of men. They made their way as quickly as they could, with Anna stepping around him as if she were the air itself, brushing against him but never enough to really touch. The wind.

And he loved it.

Loved every second of music and steel and dance and the feel of her smile bled between the two of them. He loved every moment of unrestrained freedom and weight being lifted from his chest, feeling at home in the pattern of his moves and the blood that stained the ground below them. He laughed, because he could, because they were growing closer to the cool waters of the Fountain and they were going to make it and nothing could stop them and the light that slipped between the cavernous cracks in their oasis warmed his skin. He was bubbling up from the inside and tasting relief.

They were going to make it, and it was beautiful.

He could catch the odd edge of scarred, tan skin in the corner of his eye, sleeves rolled up and the webbed fingers of fire carved across her like delicate relief sculpture, Rome in her body and Sparta in her mind. He could see the devilish smirk coloring her mouth, the one that send a warm build in the center of him, and made him think of sheets and the sounds she made with the beginnings of exertion.

She dodged one of Blackbeard's men as he parried one of Barbossa's, their swords clashing like an electric hum of lightning. Jack though that feeling, the one that picked him up from beneath and shoved him up until the air thinned out and he felt hazy with euphoria and heaven was at his back, could bring him to his knees before her. Could leave him helpless and vulnerable and so inexplicably in love with her.

It hadn't felt like this before.

Like every moment was a crystallized sensation shooting through his veins like white-fire, like he was _alive _in ways he'd never been before and the feeling made his heart pound faster and blood rush through his veins. He felt like every second of twisting, rolling battle was stored inside his chest with a sharpness that hadn't been there before, if only because he shared it with her. If only because she could keep up, because she moved with him, oriented her body around his movements like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like she was made to fit into the place beside him.

She was.

It was like a void being filled with the sharp clang of meeting swords and the bubbling laughter from deep within her, a throaty sound that cut through the agonized groans of the men she'd been unwilling to harm only moments before. They were caught inside the moment and mercy had no place there.

And she wouldn't think less of him for it, like he wouldn't think less of her.

There was still the last whispers of reluctance, there, on the very edges of her movements and the quick, clean endings she gave people when she didn't have a choice. They were only reacting, trying to avoid their end and reach their goal. The snuffed-out life in men's eyes wasn't their concern, couldn't be helped when they would have driven them through and lost them the battle.

Here, there were no heroes.

Only energy, existence heightened by the assurance of a quick death with a wrong move.

But he still could feel the shame in her, the disgust at herself for being bent and broken to the will of steel and sword and gunfire. There was no escape, no outskirt against the wall that could keep them hidden from sight. There was only the mob.

So she bent around him like wind to a flame, a dance that swept inside of their movements and drew eyes the way it always seemed to, and she hated that she loved it, loved that some moral part of her hated it.

They were controlled, sticking the edges and refusing to grant death wherever possible, as if the angel cloaked in black rested on their shoulders, on the tips of their swords, and would only strike when called upon. When they had no other choice.

The other side had no mercy, didn't know whether to find them friend or foe, though Barbossa's men avoided them widely. The crew they'd traveled with through hot, sticky nights and suffocating mornings no longer treated them with soft smiles and a sharing of rations. Their expressions were frozen in military order, fear in their bodies and they couldn't disobey. Not when Blackbeard thirsted so for blood, teeth bared and beard smoking.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Anna lock eyes with the Cabin Boy, his small body pressed up against the stone walls. She smiled, in an instant, where time slowed and Jack shifted to cover her more soundly, and it was one of the most beautiful thing's he'd ever seen.

They were close enough to speak, then, though Jack could barely hear her over the roar of angry men, dying men.

"Circle back around and untie Phillip. Tell him to run, to find Syrena. To do what he knows he must, and then _you _run, all the way to the beach, do you understand me? Run. And you don't look back!" She ordered, an edge of diamond in her voice that had Jack's heart beating all the faster. The boy nodded, a quick jerk of his head that seemed to speak the volumes he couldn't, seemed to spur him on with the memory of her sacrifice over thrashing whitewater with mermaid tails upsetting their small boat.

The boy ran, and the battle began again, picking up speed and fervor as the leaders grew desperate, strung out on their anger and fear and resentment. Injustice in a missing leg, hatred in a missing child. Jack could guess from the stern set of Bonny's mouth when she ordered Anna back, the set of her spine when she was too close to the woman.

Jack would bet his life on it.

"Jack, not growing tired, are we?" Anna asked suddenly, pulling him back to the present with a brush of her fingertips across his cheek, gathering sweat and dirt.

"Never," he answered brightly, pushing past her to join the fray again, careful to keep to the edges and minimalize his impact, the damage he could cause with a few elegant movements. She followed, because she would always follow.

He liked to think he never took that for granted, but when he moved, quick and sharp locking eyes with Angelica across the mass of writhing bodies, something in him snapped. Her stare was like a brand upon his skin, a sick claim of ownership he didn't want, a sickness curling in his stomach at the thought. His movements became less graceful, carrying a flavor of anger he'd suppressed, the cold way Angelica had stared at Anna, the dismissiveness of her gestures. The way she felt she belonged where Anna stood.

He got risky, broke away from the gentle circle of give and take and blood and push and pull. There was viciousness in the half-step he took away from her, intent in the way he locked eyes with the Spanish woman half-way across the oasis, frozen only twenty paces from the Fountain with Scrum hurrying to her side through the thick of the battle.

"_Jack_!"

There was panic in Anna's voice, and she was supposed to be _right behind him_ and he didn't know how it his possessive rage had taken him so far, vengeance and anger twisting inside of him and urging him on halfway through the crowd. He had enough time to turn and watch a gun go off with the quick spark of fire.

Time slowed to nothing, sand catching on his fingers as it slipped in a trickle between his hands. He could see Angelica from the corner of his eye, smiling. A silence seemed to take up the crowd in a singular moment, guns rare in a close-packed crowd of swords and knives and fistfights. He could see Anna's hair curl around her face, so beautifully, catching dappled sunlight and nearing a red-gold.

He watched as her body twisted, caught up in wind and the chorus of agony within the crowd of men and violence, her hand outstretched. For him.

He wasn't close enough.

He could only watch as she came to the realization, a quick shift in the center of her being from desperation to acceptance as that dragged-on-endless time finally sped up again and—

It missed.

He breathed relief and the tang of rum he hadn't tasted yet, sweetness and wind and air and divinity all wrapped up inside his chest and it was _beautiful._

He'd never been more proud of her, as she landed cat like on the blood-smeared stone, unharmed and breathing like she'd been running from Hell itself.

Anna looked up, caught Jack's panicked, desperate gaze, and grinned.

He'd never loved her more.

"Close one, that," she said brightly, bounding up again to join him with a cold-coiled tension lining her movements. She'd been afraid.

So had he.

"Love," he whispered, wishing he could cross the distance and prove how much he needed her, how much it cut into his soul to see the resignation and to know he _wasn't there._ Never close enough to stop the pain that invariably went her way, like she was a magnet to all the hits he'd never taken, all the bruises he should have collected, all the spilled blood that should have been his.

"It's alright, Jack, I'm alright."

And that was all the comfort they had time for, the chaos of the battle drawing closer to them, the violence starting up again with a new fervor, beating in the hearts of men. Jack could see the vicious way Bonny tore against Blackbeard, the foul twist of Groves' mouth as he raged through the crowd.

The young man through a concerned glance their way, to which Anna sent a smile.

It was laced with relief, and it drove a stake through Jack's heart.

"I'll be there next time. I promise," he whispered viciously.

He'd promised that before, he knew he had. Had meant it those times too.

Instead of pushing, instead of telling him he couldn't control things, instead of accepting something he couldn't hold true, she tugged on the hem of his sleeve, and pulled him back into the crowd.

They moved with purpose, their blows losing their reluctant edge and gaining desperation, a need to finish what they'd started. Jack could see Blackbeard, circled by Barbossa like he was prey, though the limp awkward, the stare was cruel. He saw no traces of the man who'd once been his first mate.

"_Give it to me_," Anna hissed, her voice a tumbled collection of shadows and Hell and every dark thing any one had ever dreamed of. She stared down Scrum with unrelenting eyes, a hand held out and a sneer curving her delicate mouth.

"Look, mate, neither of us is so much in the mood at the moment, it'd suit you best to hand over the bloody tear so we can all move on," Jack snarled, his charisma left far behind, where a bullet had buried itself into the cavernous wall just behind Anna.

Scrum sniveled, and tried to flatten himself against the craggy rock-scape, as if to diminish himself, and he was so clearly trying not to think about them. The way they'd helped, the way they moved together like a perfect unity held up above all others, about the stories he'd heard whispered in darkened taverns of their exploits.

"Scrum, the Chalices, and the tear. Follow!" Angelica barked, already scrambling towards the Fountain. She paused long enough to meet her crewman's eyes, an ugly look blanketing her face.

"I'm more afraid of them than I is o' you," he informed her, battling a strange, startled sort of grin, like he couldn't believe he'd said it at all.

Anna smiled, and it was like the sun had risen, like the world had concentrated on her as she snatched up a Chalice and the canister that held a single mermaid tear. Jack grabbed the other, delighting in the confirmed weight in his hand that seemed to make it all the more real.

"Unfortunate for you," Angelica spat, drawing her blade on the pair of them with a kind of grace that could only be taught by Jack.

And suddenly he hated the time he spent with her, beneath a Spanish sky with the sheets pushed down to their waists, wrapped around one another until their bodies seemed to have no end or beginning. He hated it.

He hated the shame that curled in the pit of his stomach when Anna caught his eye, a knowing look wrapped up inside her past, all the pain she'd ever suffered, and she was trying not to blame him. Trying so hard it hurt to watch.

Angelica fought like she seduced, all coiled tension and the sultry shift of her body as she manipulated her weapon, cutting through the spaces between them until they were forced to retaliate.

Anna reacted, her body shifting like it was made of fire, ever changing and unpredictable, always managing to surprise him, as she stepped cleanly over Scrum's crouched form and pushed Angelica back towards the Fountain with calculated movements. She looked alive, and Jack imagined he could hear her erratic heartbeat from where he stood.

He joined their fray, moved with Anna the same way he had when Angelica had first shown her face (granted she'd been wearing _his _face at the time), where they were a seamless fabric, flowing elegantly in a morning breeze without a pause. They were water, shifting over and around their surroundings with the uncaring nature of existence, where all they were, were themselves and nothing could stop them once they started.

And Jack felt like he was finally breathing, her next to him and their adversary strung out too thin, lost too much with too much on the line and she was growing unstable. Angelica lashed out with the cocked fist at Anna's face, dodged smoothly as she tucked the canister into her belt for safe keeping.

She smiled at Jack, and it felt like being forgiven.

Xx

Phillip fell beside the pool, his breathing harsh and strained to his own ears as his lungs threatened to give with the fierce burn inside of him. He'd been given another chance, the help of the small Cabin Boy, who'd cut through his bonds with the soft whisper _She said to run_, that seemed to transcend everything else and make him feel safe enough to try.

So he did.

He broke the ranks of chaos and death and _ran_, distantly realizing the Cabin Boy had followed him back through the embrace of trees and jungle until suddenly he wasn't. There had been a manic purpose in the young boys eyes, though, and the missionary knew the Princess had given him a task, charged him with the safe keeping of his own life in a way only she could.

He was safe, Phillip was sure, as he dropped next to the dirty water, tied wrists and the limp, pale body of Syrena.

He thought he finally understand how he could love her so quickly, so completely, with a fervor he'd only ever placed in God, in his Savior.

She was saving him.

He felt like the life had been breathed back into him, from the draining streets of London and the feeling of British soldiers holding him out in the streets to be fired at, the heavy weight he'd carried since. It had been washed away.

"My God. You will not take her back!" He screamed, ripping through her bonds with a desperation that ate at his soul. "_Give her back! Give. Her. Back!" _He brushed the pads of his fingers of her cheek, gentle though his body begged, though his veins screamed, though his heart was ripping down the center.

She was too still, her elegant body, porcelain beauty and elfish grace, was stiff and proud even in death.

"_Give her back. Please, please, please!" _His voice broke and he was falling, lost inside of his own mind as he pleaded, as his hand swept across her brow, fingers painting lines across her lips, cupping her neck like he could wake her with touch alone. Like he could reverse the irreversible.

Like he could fix this.

He thought about Anna, and the way her eyes had looked when she said she loved a man she couldn't save, like Jack was what made her world turn, the sun rise, like without him the world was shadow and pitiless greed and the hungry sound of men crushing other men beneath their lust for power. He hadn't wanted to believe what he saw there, the dependency and need that colored her so brilliantly. Hadn't want to see it in himself.

But it was like someone snapped all the strings that held him together, turned off the sun and pushed him down in to the center of a cold, empty embrace.

He was alone.

The thought drew a strangled cry from him, bent over Syrena's lifeless body with shaking shoulders and desperately clinging hands. He couldn't make this right, couldn't make the pain go away with a prayer and a reminder of God's presence.

He just couldn't.

Syrena breathed in violently, bucking sharply in his hold and opening her beautiful, sharp eyes to his gaze.

Her mouth moved, a silent attempt to form the right words, to say the right thing that could wipe the redness from his eyes and the confused, desperate hope in his chest. She smiled, because it was all she could do and it was all he needed.

Alive.

The word had never held so much weight, and he couldn't understand how Jack and Anna managed it, that aching fear.

He grinned, manic and afraid and warmed from the inside out, as she curled closer to him for a breath, a second, a moment treasured deep down in the center of himself, to be pulled out and marveled at later.

And then she moved, her smile turned apologetic, tinged with some arcane sense of purpose that pushed the boundaries of his understanding, latched onto duty and honor and the corpses of her sisters wasted away around her. They were going to use her tear.

It had better be for the right reasons.

Water embraced her, slipped across her skin like a promise, like it was home, and Phillip could do nothing but watch. Could do nothing but wait, as she fell below the surface with a last, slow, lingering look at the man who'd come to make her just as soundly as she made him, and swam away.

Phillip collapsed against a tree root, exhaustion in his legs and relief blanketing every inch of him, a prayer of thanks on held on his tongue that never passed his lips. This was more than God, this was love, something different all together in the tenor of their need, their frantic fear and anxiety. This was luck and time and the magic that rested deep inside of Syrena's bones. And it made him feel submerged, clinging to the last traces of his sanity and so completely alive.

Xx

A poisoned blade whistled through the air, the man behind it advancing with eyes like the dying cinders of a bonfire, smoldering and angry red around the ashen blackness of charred wood as they met the cold, impassive stare of his adversary. The woman next to him flowed, twisted in an arch defying in grace the roughness of her age, body like it was young, strong.

Barbossa moved with Bonny with the weight of the sun concentrated on his slick-steel blade, watched it catch the dappled sunlight in a moment of brilliance that made it look green or red or blue with the pressed skin of warning-color frogs. Poison darts spread across a sharp edge without mercy.

"I expected Fate to put up more of a fight!" Blackbeard growled, pushing back against the steady advance with a flourish of his heavy sword, the weight not seeming to effect the man. Barbossa wondered over the beating heart meant to be contained inside the man's chest, thought about Davy Jones and the empty chasm that used to house the last glimmers of humanity. Thought about the cruel glint in Blackbeard's eyes, the ruthlessness that seemed to transcend humanity and rest only in creatures from other planes, where he could control a ship and the sea itself with only a heavy cutlet. But Blackbeard was human.

And therefore breakable.

Bonny tripped, ankle twisting with a sharp cry of pain stuttered from between unwilling lips with shallow water pooling around her body. She snarled up at her enemy, beard smoking and her thoughts so clearly caught on prison cells and her love strung up and her child given up all because of him. All because of Blackbeard.

Just as soon as the expression blanketed her face, did it disappear with the first whispers of a smile that shook Barbossa to his blackened core. She was manic, desperate and caught on the edge of some invisible cliff, ready to hurtle herself off with the agonizing laughter of a woman possessed.

"I will not have a smile on your face when I cut you down!" Blackbeard hissed, thrusting his sword forward threateningly, the blade's intent to rest comfortably in the meat of her arm.

Barbossa parried, peg leg sliding precariously against wet stone, until they were only inches apart, framed by deadly steel on either side and close enough to smell the breath of the dead-sea in Blackbeard's breath. Death laced with salt.

Barbossa's restless eyes flicked behind the Captain, sweeping across the expanse of dead and dying and fighting bodies, the blood that ran soft pink rivers when it mixed with the clear water, and found the way they had come. He felt Bonny rise beside him, her smile so startlingly similar to her daughters, Barbossa had to swallow back the memories of the Black Pearl racing away from him and the manic, easy way she moved around Jack like he was Life itself. Not so much had changed, since then. But Bonny, she looked alive for the first time in a long time, the stretch of her lips taking a dangerous sharpness that cut through the air around them and made him feel underwater.

"Look, Edward Teach" she hissed, a command that riddled every inch and scar and wrinkle on her face, made her seem wise beyond the decades she had lived. Like she had seen everything, the very edge of existence itself.

"Take a gander," Barbossa prompted, when Teach's eyes stayed trained on them, a cold kind of impassiveness resting inside the blue-grey. And Barbossa wondered if death would really make so much of a difference.

Blackbeard turned slowly, his full weight resting in the elegant X their swords made to prevent Barbossa from moving, as he took in the scene before him with the analytical analysis of a tactician. The one-legged man thought he saw a whisper of apprehension, of a man unused to changes in plans.

The Spanish melted from the mist with the cool precision of fey creatures, elegance in the firm straightness of their spines and the draping of feathers across the right cheek of the Captain. He was beautiful, the same delicately carved features Jack carried with a kind of unhurried grace about him that made his movements deliberate and careful. His dark hair curled around his face as if caught up in a perfect wind, tousled just enough to be human and immaculate in his clothing, hands clean and calluses unseen.

Their arrival crushed silence down on the mob, dirty, disheveled pirates and privateers alike stilling in the midst of angry battle, throats cut and wounds bleeding, and enraptured by the stern, commanding attention that seemed to flow so freely from the man before them, and the company gathered at his heels.

He moved like Jack did, on the rare occasion he was sober enough to see the horizon hold still at the edge of his vision and move with the gentle rock of the ship. He moved like he walked on water and it was easy, like the rest of the world oriented itself around his steps.

Anna and Jack stepped out from the battle with Angelica, cradling a Chalice each and grinning as their steps echoed into complete silence. Anna watched the Spaniard survey them, catching on the rugged, dirty nature of their clothing and the dirt smeared over their skin, his head tipping back with barely withheld contempt.

Groves stood in front of the Fountain with the courage he shouldn't have, the loyalty that screamed and thrashed against the walls of his mind and begged for him to take a stand, the British flag weighing heavily in his hands with every debt he owed his country. He spread it wide, arms out like a martyr.

"I hereby claim-"

Anna pressed a hand down on his shoulder, halting his words before they could fully form with the calm serenity of a woman removed, floating above the rest of the world as she passed her Chalice to Jack and tugged the flag from Groves' hands.

"Don't waste your life for a country you don't love," she said softly, bringing the fabric end to end and folding it with practiced movements. Jack thought she must be aware of every eye on her, the critical way the Spanish Captain's eyes ran over her, as if expecting a knife to be thrown his way, a gun to fire off into the silence. Anything.

But no.

She turned slowly, placing the flag on the stone floor in some strange imitation of burial, and stood tall before the rest. Blackbeard seemed unable to move, watching with a curiosity that devolved into morbid interest as a smile of greeting spread across the young woman's face. A face that looked _so_ like the enemy before him, still holding sword to his throat.

"I would offer you some kind of welcome, but I fear I'm not technically in a position of power at the moment," Anna began slowly, watching for another twitch of movement from the stoic man before her. She took another step forward, and the sound of it rebounded from the walls, echoed in a strange chorus. "My name is Annabelle Windsor."

"The Lost Princess," the man acknowledge, with a slight bow at the waist and an interested look hovering in his dark eyes. She laughed, lightly, the sound like bells to Jack's ears.

"'Lost' is a much more forgiving term than the one my father uses," she answered with a soft smile. "I understand what you are here to do."

"You will not deter us, your highness, only God can grant eternal life," he said firmly, his mouth twisting into a feral sneer, passion in the depth of his words, that seemed to carry like the words of angels across the gathered crowd.

"On the contrary, I _want _you to continue," Anna answered, bright and sharp in the shocked stillness her words provided, the disbelieving snort from Angelica in the background that seemed to highlight the strangeness. "I'd be much obliged if you neglected to shoot any of us, though," she added.

The bow he gave this time was deeper, a show of respect and mutual understanding that transcended country lines and borders and purpose. He smiled, the barest flicker of expression across his elfish face, and nodded.

"Men, destroy this profane temple!" the Captain ordered sharply, stepping carefully towards Anna with deliberate purpose, and suddenly Jack was there, hovering by his side like he belonged there. And the Captain thought he did, filling the space so perfectly it appeared they were a matching set, of bloody clothing and mud-streaked skin, of hardship and struggle and joy and freedom. He could understand that, could respect the gentle way the pirate's arm slid around the princess' waist, like he was the one not trusted. He supposed he was.

He held out a hand, greeting and question in one gesture that made a bright grin fall over the man's face, and the Captain found him charming, found him alive in ways no one else could possibly be. He handed over the Chalices with a calm acceptance that spoke of a prior plan of the same goal.

"Not a decent way to gain life anyway," he said with a startlingly smooth voice, accent posh and carefully crafted, wrapped around his tongue with precision. "It's not even eternal."

"Gracias," he said, because that was all he had to say, as his boot came down on the silver cups, crushing one side, denting the other, and kicked them into the embrace of deep, cold water.

They disappeared from sight, and a sound like thunder, like the very hand of God reaching down from the heavens to complete their divine work, sounded throughout the gentle oasis, shattering the calm, heavy feeling of the air around them. It felt like waking from a dream.

The columns crashed down to the embrace of water and a stone floor, the easy fall of cursed water slowing to nothing, the barest hint of a drip falling from the caved, embracing arches, slung over one another in a haphazard jumble of fallen rock.

"_The Fountain!"_

Cries of rage broke out from stitched corpses still moving by some other witchcraft, and a sickness rolled inside of the Captain. He watched them rush forward, slipping over their own feet with their awkward, stiff movements, more despairing than their Captain, who watched the proceedings with a cold, distant look resting in his eyes that seemed to carry him far and away.

The Spaniard nodded to the pair before him, who watched the arcane beauty of a pagan temple crumble to nothing with faces nothing short of relief, their eyes already searching out a home in one another, and walked towards Blackbeard, finally released by his two stone-faced adversaries. The man looked empty, his eyes reflecting nothing but hatred and contempt. The Captain returned it easily.

"You are a fool. You seek in this place what only faith can provide," he said strongly, pointing to the very center of Teach's chest, where whatever dark, dead piece of his soul resided, crippled and blackened by the force of his hate and the rejection of his faith.

Fate played no part in an Act of God.

What else could this be, this meeting of royalty and enemy and privateers? This collection of desperation and purpose that lined all of their bodies. He could see God's work in the way Windsor leaned into her pirate companion like he was the only thing keeping her upright, as they walked, elegant as angel wings, towards the craggy, one-legged man and infamous pirate beside him, Bonny watching the princess like she would tell her secrets. He could see it in the way Blackbeard glared, beaten and clinging to the pieces of his mask that made him fearful.

"_Faith_," Teach spat, his face twisting in a feral snarl of unbidden rage, and the Spaniard could see the power, there, the mysticism and the ability to tear into the very fabric of a person and rip out what was most important. "In faith there is light enough to see but darkness enough to blind."

The Spaniard watched Barbossa move, blade slicing through the still, shocked air around them, where privateer and pirate alike crowded together to avoid the harsh, condescending looks from the Spanish crew and they looked as if they'd been torn from sleep and shoved back into the real world. Where the sunlight made warm patterns on their skin and the Fountain was gone and the bodies of their friends were stacked against the far wall. The carnage and the smell of death set into their minds, too familiar in the flavor, the taste of it. He watched.

And he didn't stop him.

The cut was long, shallow but enough to cause an abrupt, sharp hiss of pain from between Blackbeard's teeth, as the blade drew across his inner wrist with the precision of a practiced man. Barbossa watched with victory in his eyes, Bonny just behind him with something so close to joy, euphoria.

Teach's sword clattered to the ground, the heavy cutlet splashing into shallow water, and his eyes grew afraid, not in the slow increments of realization, but all at once, with a force that left the others reeling.

Jack watched, enraptured, as a sudden, needy desperation clawed up the back of the man's throat and forced a strangled sound from his lips. "What devilry is this?" the older man whispered, stunned confusion making him turn to face his end.

Barbossa ran him through, no mercy in his eyes and a deep fire of satisfaction as Blackbeard slid to the ground, a circle of the closest gathering around him as he drew uneven, gurgling breaths.

"For your victims, for Bonny, for my leg," Barbossa hissed, a cruel twist to his mouth as he watched Teach labor for breath, hinge on the edge of death for slow moments that seemed to drag and speed by all at once.

"_No! What have you done?!" _Angelica screamed, pushing through them, knocking Jack and Anna ever closer to the dying man as she dropped to her knees and clutched at his shoulders. Blackbeard pushed her off with the dwindling remains of his strength, muscles twitched dangerously, threatening to give way into the harsh spasms of True Death, no hope once he started foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling up in his head and fingers clutching at nothing.

He visibly swallowed his fear, rage surfacing again like the swell of a tidal wave, swept across the Pacific with strength enough to take out whole villages, blocking the light from the sun with its intensity.

"I may not be long…for this world." He struggled around the words, spat them out with the tang of blood speckling his lips and thought this was his last moment, his last chance to draw a red smear across the pages of his history, written in the blood-ink of his victims. This last entry would not be recorded only in his own. His fingers wrapped around the hilt of Barbossa's sword, felt the blade shift inside the fleshy hold of his stomach, and pulled, gleaming and red and deadly with the barest of touches. "_But I will not go alone!"_

The blackness encroached on his vision, moving in with the cold hand of Death on the back of his neck as he gathered his strength. He lunged, movement like lightning, the sword flashing in the sunlight.

He died with the corners of his lips kicked up into a near-smile, glimmering with the rage that he could never be rid of, and haunted by Fate.

"_**No!**_"


	31. Chapter 31

**Hey guys! Sorry this is so late, but it was a fairly difficult piece to accomplish, and I had some other stuff going on, but it's done now! There are a lot of different perspectives crammed into one scene, but I think it's clear who's speaking each time. If it's not and you're really having a problem with it, let me know in a PM and I will try to clear it up. Please do not forget to comment. This is the second to last chapter, I do believe. One more to go!**

"_**No!**_"

Dying was a lot like waking from a nightmare. It was all frantic gasps and prayer and telling yourself it wasn't real, and your body threatening to pull you under and never let you go. An endless sleep.

It was a lot like swallowing the sun, a burn of poison that caught onto veins and spread like fire to the mast of a ship, the fabric curling and blackening with the last whispers of wind against it.

It was a lot like slamming hull first into the wrong side of a wave, washed over with water and weight. Like everything you stood on had been ripped out from underneath you and for a moment you're floating, falling, sinking, and the ground beneath you is the only way you know you're on earth at all.

It was like that.

Only ten times worse.

Ten times more horribly clear, and he could suddenly see _everything_, feel _everything_. The overload on his senses was a deluge of raw feeling, the way light hit the water and dust rose like smoke from the ruins of the Fountain, the way the sword felt against his skin, and the color of her eyes when he met them, a grey-blue shot with silver, the feel of her against his body, the empty air when she stumbled backwards from his push. The way she looked in the space he invaded, like she was ready to die.

Captain Jack Sparrow slipped through battle-thick air and the smell of death and blood and dying, and when he landed, it was almost a surprise. The pain was something else. It started quick with the red bloom on his shirt, catching quick on his veins. He imagined a flame engulfing paper, curling and blackening and becoming nothing.

He didn't want to be nothing.

How did _anyone_ survive dying?

"Jack." Her voice was a croaked whisper, cracked and broken and fading. Like speaking would make all of it real. "_Jack!_"

Anna dropped to her knees beside him, her fingers fluttering over the blood and the pain spike, set his spine arching and his hands into fists. She jerked like she'd been burned, and her fingertips found his face, the sharpness of his cheekbones and the sweat suddenly coming to life on his brow.

She looked otherworldly. Her long hair fell around her in tangles, framed her face with loose curls that caught the sunlight and shown a warm brown-gold. And her eyes, there was a revolution of light happening behind them, sparks of falling stars and dying embers. Like the sun rested there, and she was alive in ways no one else was.

And that made him smile.

Her gaze burned into him, desperate and breaking and falling off the edge of everything and there was a piece inside her breaking and Jack was dying and now he could _feel _it. Because she looked like she could, like she'd taken all the pain onto herself with that frozen look of blinding fear.

"No, _no, nonono_! You bloody _stupid _man! _This isn't the way this is meant to end!_"

Her voice sounded like it was coming from far away, but was too close all at once, like she was whispering it in his ear, like she was pressing the worlds into the inside of his heart, leaving them tattooed there.

Her eyes were wild, blue and alive in a way they'd never really been before. Like she was crumbling from the inside out in a huge fire, the kind that roasted slowly and turned you into the sun. And it was for him, that brilliant star-white fire.

A fitting sight, if it should be his last.

He didn't have the strength to feel regret.

But he didn't need breath to feel the pain, it ripped through him in sweeping waves of twitching agony that left him writhing against the wet stone. It wasn't fire, it was a flood. It consumed him in rising tides and caught him on the riptide.

He was drowning in it, in the blood in his lungs.

"—promised," he whispered, spat out the words and tasted copper on his lips.

The edges of the world seemed to float inside of darkness, in and out, and he could see the stars, pattered across Anna's skin as she filled his vision, consumed it.

"_Someone do something. Someone do something!_"

It seemed like the whole world was mourning, things seemed suspended. Her hair fell around her face in ratty curls, and her hands fluttered over him restlessly, as if her touch could stitch him back together, suck the poison from his veins.

But there was movement, panicked and fast from the corners of his vision, like fairies were dancing for the end of the world. He saw people running, felt hands press down onto his ribs, and imagined rivers of red pouring into the swell of his lungs.

Oceans made in its dry chambers.

"No, I—I have to—move. Get out of the way!" Anna shouted, shoving up roughly and knocking crewmembers and Spaniards and Englishmen down with the ferocity of the movement. Like she was an earthquake.

She was running, and Jack could see her disappear behind the crushed fountain, hear her coughing through the smoke and dust. He was fading, too fast to hold on. He turned his head, and felt his body seize in agony, like he was a rag doll with all the stitches split.

Blackbeard was dead, glassy-eyed and final.

"Oh god, Oh god, Oh god," Bonny whispered, over and over. She looked far away, lost in a world where her Jack met the noose and she prayed and there was no answer. But Jack couldn't read that darkness in her eyes. Could only see it went deep, crawled into the center of her chest and made a home there long ago, festered. That his death, and that's what this _was_, brought it all to the surface.

"Jack, Jackie," Barbossa said, like he used to when they were years younger and stood on the same bow with the same purpose. When they were something like friends. His eyes were sad, and he seemed so much older, the lines on his face grooved deep and etched permanent. Like they'd been there forever.

Like they would grow deeper still, with time.

And suddenly, with a kind of lost-haze that seems to befall the dying, Jack imagined the sea crawling into those canyons and marking them with saltwater in time. He wondered if the earth was as riddled with them beneath the waves as it was on land, and how the water filled them all up. Like he was being filled up by the blood.

It hurt to breathe.

He coughed and red fell in patterns onto the stone near his mouth. He convulsed, and the pain shot livewires down his body, lightning and dark magic. Tia Dalma was somewhere, laughing. Davy Jones stood with a debt in his hands.

Anna waved goodbye from the shore as it was swept up in fire, passion.

He couldn't really tell what was before his eyes, and the pain made his head lurch uncomfortably, like he was still falling to the ground, only in all different directions.

Maybe he could go backwards, and fly like sparrows did.

Xx

No.

Not this.

Not again.

She could feel him slipping through her fingers, bloodstained and marked by traces of him. Anna was afraid. So desperately afraid. It was like the world had cracked open and she was falling in.

Xx

The mermaid rose from nothingness, her fingers wrapped delicately around the Chalices like they were soft and fragile, some treasure she had found in sunken ships deep below the brim. Syrena could taste the scrambling mad panic in the air, the way men bent over a broken body like he was necessary to the fabric of reality. Like if he was gone, they would cease to exist.

But she only believed it in the girl, sloshing through knee deep water and coughing through the smoke, her eyes running, smudging the last kisses of kohl around her eyes and staining her cheeks. She couldn't seem to breathe, was sobbing, was breaking.

It was like she was the one dying, instead of the Captain, who lay twitching and silent.

It was like the sun had gone out. Like the moon had fallen to the surface of the world.

So she held out the Chalices when she got close, and spoke so the woman would recognize her as real, and not some shadowy figment of her own fevered mind.

"Take care of him," she said, because she could feel the weight of her Phillip on her cold heart, and most people don't get as many chances as they all had. Most people don't get so many tries. "Don't waste this."

Her hands were empty, and the woman, choking on a 'Thank you' or an 'I promise' was already running towards the last leaking goodbye of the Fountain of Youth, stumbling and falling and getting up all over again.

Syrena slipped beneath the water again, and answered the bone-deep call in her chest. She needed Phillip like she needed air. Because the woman's eyes had struck something in her, so dead and shattered. The world had lost all meaning to her.

Syrena wanted to cherish every moment with her meaning, her light, her sun and moon and stars and horizon. She wanted to keep it close.

She didn't ever want to wear that look.

She prayed the woman was able to throw it off of her soon and toss it into the waves, never to be seen again.

Xx

The water spilled onto her hands, cold and clear. She was trembling, the Chalices shaking. She imagined she was breathing for Jack, was helping him take in air, and made herself suck in the mist and fog and dust like it was precious. It felt like it coated the inside of her body a damp, heavy grey.

She could feel her own blood pumping.

A life for a life.

That was the way these things worked, that was the way those kind of promises worked.

_I'll protect you _became _I will die for you_ so quickly.

It all happened so fast, less than a moment where she saw the blade and tightened for the strike and then it wasn't there. There was only Jack, crying out around the steel and sliding, floating to the floor.

Too fast.

His heartbeats were fading too fast.

Xx

The Spaniard crouched close to the dying man, pressed his white gloves against the pound and kept them there, tried to trap the blood in, tried to keep the man breathing. The one he loved, the princess, had run to the corpse of the Fountain, trembling from the inside with grief. But he was sure she would save him.

Juan de Prado could not find it in himself to deny Sparrow that.

"Done it before," Jack said, reading a natural, animal kind of worry in the commander's face. Juan was startled by the perception there, the intelligence that clung to the inside of his irises, like he'd seen more of the world than he had, like he'd been to the end of the world of back and had more years than he.

"_Qué_?"

"Brought 'im back to life," Barbossa answered from the other side of him, clutching Jack's shoulders with gnarled, aged hands to keep him upright, as if he could drain the poison from his veins. "Girl don't believe in lost causes."

"No," Juan said, a sureness gripping him tightly through the fast-breath panic that had seized him when the Sparrow fell. He never liked to be this close to dying. "She believes he is worth the impossibility. You can read it behind her eyes, but, _es el amor_." His accent made the words sound like music.

Jack twitch beneath his consistent pressure and Juan thought about God, thought about the way a man lay dying for the woman he loved. How she would give anything to fix it. How a just God wouldn't let that shocked-white paleness stick to her skin, the shattered empty linger in her eyes.

A just God would let him live.

Xx

The tear slid into the left Chalice like a singular raindrop from a near-broken sky. Like everything else would shatter in just a moment, and the deluge would come. It would wash away this knife-point sadness, cleanse her of the shaky fear and the—

_ohgodohgodohgod_—

inability to think.

Xx

Barbossa hated this, hated the poison sword at his side and the white foam at the corners of Jack's lips, hated the sun and the stars and the sky and the ocean for giving him this vengeance. He hated God for not existing.

Jack wasn't one of those people that was _allowed _to die. Not after the things he'd done. Not after working for Becket as Captain of the _Wicked Wench_ for a handful of sunsets and moments before realizing his cargo was human, skin dark and eyes frozen over, and setting them loose on Tia Dalma's island. Not after watching his ship, his only love, sink to the depths and willing it to rise again with black wood and black sails like the black pearl she was.

Born again, from the sea.

Not after wearing a brand and giving a fashion of his own.

Not after chasing sunsets and buried treasure and talking about touching the horizon with him, a man grown old too young with greed in his bones. Jack was not the hero, just as Barbossa was not the villain, but they were both essential to the story.

They were the thread that kept it together.

The push and pull of respect and hate had kept them afloat and it was more than frightening to think that Barbossa didn't really know what to do, without Jack.

Sparrow's hands clenched and unclenched, seeking. Anna was running back to them.

Their time was slipping into nothingness.

Xx

She couldn't move fast enough and the wind seemed to bite against her face and _closer, she had to get closer._

The Chalices weighed so heavy in her hands.

Xx

He hadn't thought about it. It had been a reaction, to step in her way, to push her back.

It had been akin to breathing. In and out until you die.

Jack didn't regret it. Didn't regret dying.

Xx

It was like watching Calico suffer the noose. Like watching Mary die in childbirth, like selling herself to a prince for a price, like giving up the consequence for revenge.

Anne Bonny couldn't breathe, could only stand just behind the Spaniard, numb and dying in her own way.

A life for a life, that was the way the Fountain worked.

Lives seemed to cost so much more, these days.

Xx

Groves could taste the pain, bled between the two of them. Could see the fragile way Jack breathed like he was fluttering inside of a great wind, and the whiteness of his skin. Could feel the shudder-chill of death down the back of his neck. And he could feel Anna's heart crack down the center and splinter off, could feel pieces of it collide into the other parts of her body, until she was collapsing from the inside out.

They were still the greatest pirates he'd ever known.

Jack was dying with dignity, holding onto pain-pressed tears with fiercely gritted teeth, gold caps bared to the foggy air. He looked feral, wrapped up inside the agony and the need not to show it.

When Anna collapsed so delicately next to him again and set the Chalices on the ground beside his hands, Groves could feel the desperation. Could hear the silent, _please still be breathing_.

She kissed him, quick and needy and so endlessly real.

James Norrington used to say pirates couldn't feel love.

Groves knew he was a liar. Because Jack kissed her back like she was the only air he could ever need, like she was healing, was divinity and prayer and sadness and joy and need and want and asleep and awake and the sun and the moon and the sea.

And that was love.

Xx

"Hold on, Birdie. It's alright," Anna whispered, her hands shaking as they reached again for the blessed Chalices. She pressed the left into Jack's shaking, dying hands. She imagined she could tell the tear apart from the rest of the water, it was that special.

She gripped the right in held on to the stem and hoped the water was cool enough to quench the tight, restricted feeling of her throat.

She was crying.

"It's alright, Shh. It's okay."

"_No_," he said, his eyes a dangerous tint, all darkness and endless conviction. Death would take him years before he let her die in his place.

Her tears fell against his upturned face.

"Please, _please_. Let me save you!"

Open-mouthed and floundering, the warm bodies surrounding them could only watch. Groves raised his right hand, his face a smooth mask.

"I'll do it," he said firmly. The horizons were closing in on him now, pinning him up against a final edge and he was going to fall and it was okay. Because he still believed in miracles and in God and in faith. And that kind of love was a miracle. Anna's blue eyes were despairing.

She wanted to say okay.

She wanted to let him.

More than anything.

"You can't." She shook her head, her hair falling down into her eyes and hiding them from his view. He was grateful. Those eyes weighed too heavy on his soul, made his skin feel ill-fitted to his bones. "I can't let you."

"Just…let me go," Jack whispered.

His voice was reluctant and afraid. So soft she almost couldn't hear it. He didn't want to die.

But he loved her more.

"Can't do that either," she whispered back, like it was some great, terrible secret. "Love you too much."

That was the sixth time she'd said 'I love you.' Jack had been counting.

"Love, please. Don't make….live…so long without." He couldn't finish. The words were too slow on his tongue.

Anna let out a broken sob, hunched over his body in the imitation of a prayer.

Men removed their hats.

Juan de Padro, who would become the governor of Cuba in short years, crossed himself slowly. Tried to convince himself his eyes were not watering.

Groves prayed.

Barbossa looked so lost.

The air around them was still, until by some unseen consensus, the crowd parted. Bonny put a hand against Anna's trembling back, the weight of it settling deep between them, and pried the Chalice from her clutching hands.

Anna jerked upright, her eyes a furious kind of betrayed, empty and lost and broken, wandering the pathways of her heart while it crumbled down around her.

"Please," Bonny implored, and Anna so much in her face. It was almost like looking in a strange, distorted mirror. Almost like pieces of her own face were secreted away beneath the years on Anne Bonny's. The shade of blue of her eyes and the curve of her jaw and the twist of her lips. Her face held more than resignation. It held peace, and love and the slightest bit of fear. But mostly happiness. Like she was coming home. "Let a mother do her duty."

Anna couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. And so Bonny drank.

Barbossa tipped Jack's Chalice into his slack mouth with gentle hands.

When the water took her, it was with a gentle, sweet touch. It crawled up her legs and wrapped her into an embrace her waist like a lover might, like a lover had, so many summers ago.

Xx

Bonny could feel Calico, could taste him on her tongue. Could feel the weight of her baby girl in her arms.

It was almost like diving beneath the surface of the ocean, quick and consuming. There was a peace and the sudden, complete assurance that you are neither alone nor lonely. And all at once, you were—

Gone.

Xx

Jack opened his eyes.

It was kind of like a sunrise.


	32. Chapter 32

**Hello everyone! **

**This is the last chapter. Ever. Unless there's another movie, in which case, who knows. But as of right now, there are no more chapters, no more installments. This has been over a year of absolutely wonderful support and I cannot thank everyone enough for sticking with me through this. For helping me accomplish this much. I had horrible writers block on this, because it was the end, and I wanted it to be perfect. I don't know about that, but. I'm happy with it. I would really appreciate closing reviews. Thank you again. It's been an amazing journey.**

**-Han**

You could find them at the bottom of the ocean, those heartbeats. In those slow heavy-pressed seconds without sound, they were pushed by the weight into the warmth of their bodies and the swallowing depth of their minds. They were cold.

But more than that, they were empty.

The rest of the world crowded in around them, and they felt nothing but the wet touch and slide of enchanted water as it ran from an empty body near them. But the choke-hold fear of it, as it ran downwards passed them, threatened to crawl up against his waist and pull him down, into the canyons beneath the waves, where no light pierced that darkness.

They felt no sunshine against their skin. It was not the presence of dark, but the absence of the sun, and it tore at them. It made a rough home against their chests and beat in time with them, tried to drown out the sound of his heartbeats.

Her fingers trembled against his face, pressed gently into the hollows of his eyes, whispered over his lids and traced over his cheekbones, shaking. Trying to memorize him. But couldn't quiet feel him there.

She was alone.

He was lonely.

Caught on the edge of a poisonous sword and shuddering around the taste of bloodless air. A darkened horsemen breathed down the back of his neck, drew cold fingertips shaped like raindrops down his chin.

Everything hurt and nothing _felt real._ He was a ghost inside his own body, his own flesh had been caught on the waves and drifted out. He blinked, and the world filtered in slowly.

Dawn.

Or. Her.

Her eyes, blue and shining with the impossibility of the, apparently, possible.

Swept up in sea-salt tears and reddened around the whites, like sea foam had been stained with his rust colored fingers. She pressed her hands more firmly against the sides of his face, and the noise she made was somewhere inside of a crashing wave and the taste of lightning. A rough-dragged sob from the center of her.

Kind of like the earth beneath them was splitting open.

She closed her eyes, like she was troubled by the emptiness between them, like he wasn't there at all, like the silence had crawled inside her and made a home inside her trembling lips.

Pieces of the ocean leaked from his eyes.

Rain fell from hers.

And then.

They met in the middle, splashes on skin and choked, starved breaths. It was like they were pushed by the currents into each other, and the rising sun had taken them by the heartstrings and wound them together. She shuddered against him, and he surged up against the invisible weight to meet her, his hands trembling against her jaw.

She kissed him like he was air and she'd been held under the brim for too long. He kissed back like she was the sun and dawn was coming, rising over the darkness inside his eyes and eclipsing the fear.

Like she was a hundred thousand stars and he was pulling her apart, spark by spark to find the center of her, the flame.

And they were neither alone nor lonely.

Just alive.

You could almost hear the last drops of the Fountain whispering goodbye, in that silence.

But not quite.

Breathing drowned it out, pressed it back into smoke and mist and broken rock, and it was something like a symphony, if a sunrise could make music.

They dawned on the night, and the music rocked them across a boundless ocean, sun sparkling off the water.

Xx

Sometimes Anna wondered if her mother was watching her inside the castle. If she was among the faces she'd seen sitting in on endless courts and balls or in the side hallways, where the maids stored supplies and the butler kept his card deck. She used to pretend that if she tried hard enough to find her face in the passing women, she could figure it out on her own.

And her mother would swoop her up onto her hip and press her forehead against Anna's and tell her what a clever girl she was, and smile. And it would be like the sunrise, that smile, such a strong pull that everyone in the palace would be forced to replicate it.

Because they were together again, and everyone would have to feel that happiness.

That perfect pieces of a puzzle meeting.

Her mother hated high society, Anna decided, as she ghosted down ornate halls with dress trains trailing far behind her. She hated the crown and the rules but never wanted Anna to break them, so that she wouldn't get hurt.

Her mother lived in the country, bundled up in a warm little house that always smelled like a bakery, and her hands were dotted with little scars from keeping it up by herself. There was no one else, and it would be so easy to slide inside that life, to catch her mother's skirts in tiny fists and giggle outside in the small garden and streak her skin with dirt just so her mother could wipe it off with a cool cloth.

Her voice would be like a candle, a gentle, flickering kind of thing. Soft and slow-burning, but it gave light to the room, it made it seem warmer, like a hot burning star had fallen to earth and was still shining.

The years came and went, seasons that packed dirty snow against the streets and made her sweat uncomfortably through her layers of corsets and heavy fabric. And no one ever came, no one ever looked at her with a slow, secret smile, and no one ever saved her.

There was no woman, no mother.

Anna stopped looking for herself in passing faces, stopped dreaming of her voice in the calm quiet of the evening, stopping thinking about it all together. Because there was no one beyond that veil of dreams, not even a shadow.

Until now.

Xx

Dry bones cracked and yellowed with phantom age lay in a crumpled heap. Jack could see them from where he lay, and traced their outline with the inside of his eyes, burned their image into his retinas.

He felt like there was wind inside his blood, could feel her years bundled up inside him, pushing against the sides of his lungs and pooling in his fingertips.

Like someone had set him aflame in a place where pain didn't exist, and he was burning for the sake of making light. He breathed, felt air rush in like the coming tide, and it tasted sweet. It fed the flame.

He felt like scars has been peeled from off his back and tossed into the water, like the fine lines carved by the sea around his eyes had been kissed away. He felt like, if he lay still enough, he would have the time to feel the earth spinning, to grow a part of it, to feel its heartbeat.

He thought if you should care to wait long enough, you could maybe feel time slip through your fingers, like a smooth, satin-twist of endless ebb and flow. And when you got there, you could reach out far enough to touch the very edge of the horizon, where the sky and stars meet, and feel the sunrise.

Jack could.

He'd never felt further from the Locker, from a desert hell at Dante's feet.

He was winged, against the wind and weightless.

With years and years to finally learn how to fly.

He wondered if children felt like this when their mother died, like the whole world had depended on them, and things were suddenly out of balance. His eyes stayed on the corpse but he felt he was looking at something greater, at the edge of the sky when pinks and purples swept up the shadows in the clouds and made the horizon look aflame.

"Thank you."

Xx

She didn't even get to say goodbye.

Didn't get to memorize her face, to find all the little pieces of herself there and secret them away in the very back of her mind, where their rush and crash life didn't touch. Where things stayed quiet and warm and loved.

Her hands felt heavy where Bonny's touch lingered on some plane in-between reality and memory. Like her skin itself remembered, and was trying to hold onto it.

There wasn't even a moment, one she could rock herself to sleep with later, something that gave her a closing door. Just the sound of her voice, rough and torn with years of sea-salt and barked orders, and the way her eyes looked content. Like she was floating somewhere far away from them.

Anna didn't even get to grip her shoulder, or press her face into the crook of her neck, where she'd imagined being rocked into dreams so long ago. Just her empty hands and the blood on her clothes. Just the cavern in her chest and the tears running down her face. Just the taste of an embittered woman's guilt, for getting swept away by the hatred, and forgetting the weight she once held in young and shaking arms.

Anna didn't get to say she forgave her.

Xx

_Pirates can't love, Groves. They're barely even human._

He'd never heard such a lie.

Jack's hands were clinging, white-knuckled on Anna's shoulder her shirt bunched up in his palm, dirt and blood dragged across her skin. He trembled, and Groves could see the fear, the relief, the taste of ghosts inside his mouth and death breathing down his neck. He hid his eyes in the crook of Anna's neck, where Groves thought it must be some pale imitation to their slow-waking mornings adrift.

When he'd spoken, when he'd thanked a corpse for so much more than just saving him, his voice had cracked, and the assembled flinched almost as one being. Men of all nationalities and flags bowed in mourning and respect and Groves could swear he saw wet faces among them.

He wasn't surprised, still had a hand pressed up against his mouth, as if to catch an odd noise that would rip apart this moment.

Groves couldn't tell you what it was like, when they stared at each other, suspended and quiet, like they were expecting Jack to be gone, irretrievable and lost. Barbossa had backed away, his aging, twisted face, smoothed over, like some ancient god had whispered something kind in his ear and the world was right again, with those essential to the story living to see another sunrise against the ocean.

The minutes had stretched, while they relearned each other's faces and waiting for death to fall against them like a huge, white wave of suffocating inevitability. Groves wondered if he'd existed in that moment. If any of them had.

Just because he'd never seen two people more alive in his entire life, never seen two people more desperate and afraid and blindingly in love.

Everything else must pale in comparison to their reality. He was a husk, a ghost.

And then.

When the spell broke and they surged to meet each other, Groves could hear music. A crescendo that gave him shivers, that crawled up the back of his spine and made him uncomfortable in the raw beauty of it. That made him remember the little things, the way sun looked on the water, and the flavor of a Port Royal day in the winter, when the air was cold but the sun warmed his skin. He thought about stars and sunsets and floating villages in Singapore and fireworks and floating lanterns and the graceful, impossible way Jack and Anna moved when they fought, like they were dancing alive with fire and magic.

It was like watching angels find humanity, falling together because this was _worth it._

And he smiled, had led an applause they couldn't hear, whose only purpose was to make the rest of them remember that they were alive at all. The sound of it had crashed against the sides of their stoned-in well of misty heaven, and it was like waves crashing down on them.

The silence came back so quickly, and Groves felt hushed by a mother into quiet. Jack was matted down with blood, dirt cut through with salt-streaked tears none of them would speak of later. His eyes were shiny, catching the light in places water wanted to leak out, but the brown was endlessly deep, searching until it found a woman who was so much more. He looked from another world. Angular and fiercely beautiful, the pieces of him, tan skin and wired muscle and sharp cheekbones and trembling lower lip made up something otherworldly.

And Anna.

Like a shattered angel, like the precipice of beauty and pain. Like she had sinned for love and someone had ripped huge black wings at the base of her and left her flightless and shivering. Like she was bleeding grief and ecstasy and bitterness and love.

Like she'd just been granted emotion, and didn't know what to feel.

Her skin looked to be made of porcelain, a soft white like Grecian statues or clouds on a summer morning, only streaked with mud and drying blood and old bruises and scars that webbed across her arms like the fingers of demons. Like she was fighting hellfire and heaven all at once and Jack was the only thing keeping her alive.

He was air and she was drowning.

And they were an accidental audience. They were not made to see this. These creatures borne from sea spray and star light and blood.

God help them, they couldn't look away.

Xx

Her hand reached, bloodied and trembling, thin, elegant fingers with broken nails and thick calluses skating across wet, rough stone out towards the corpse. A child reaching for the hem of her mother's dress. Her heartbeat fluttered, and she felt it crashing in her throat, eating away the words.

If she tried to speak, something would break inside her. She was sure.

The movement was stilted, like she couldn't quite remember how to, like a stutter around a word that didn't taste right.

Jack's hand enveloped hers, his rings pressing against hers in a soft clink and pulled her the rest of the way, gliding over stone with the lightest of touches, gave her what she needed. Together, her fingertips, his, _theirs_ traced the hollows of eyes that had been blue.

Her gaze looked fractured, shattered, like the ocean had been broken into a thousand pieces. She pressed her lips close together, sucked them in until the dusky pink was hidden, and turned away, her whole face twisting, rebelling against the need to scream. To let go.

It was like she was adrift, floating in the dark corners of her own mind and she was dreaming, she just wanted to wake up. She wanted to see the end of the storybook foldout of her own mind and find herself curled beneath the sheets on the _Pearl. _

_ God, please. Don't let me really be this far from shore._

Jack caught the back her neck, and he was _alive_, and it was like she was being torn at the seams. Being ripped apart by the forces that made her up and she was going to be scattered on the wind. There was too much to feel, and no way to balance the joy and the heartbreak and the hope and the hurt. God, that hurt.

There was a lack of color the world, but the greys were lit with lightning.

His eyes met hers, searching so endlessly.

There were midnights when they rolled to each other with fingers skating across the rough cotton sheets for a heartbeat, for warmth that absorbed everything, just so that they could be lost in the knowledge that they weren't sleeping alone. Sometimes they were hard to find, on nights when the mind made Anna sit high in the crow's nest to let the cold make her face numb. Or a calm night made Jack itch to star up at the stars, so he'd lay in the center of the deck and look up to try to find the things she did, when she was in his place with Cotton, back when a black spot stained his skin and they were strangers again.

And now she was far and away and strange. Alien. There was a pain in her eyes Jack couldn't define, a kind of shamed loss that would settle on her soul for years. That he couldn't wipe clean with a smirk and the promise of another adventure.

She'd been so close.

And hadn't even gotten that moment.

Hadn't even gotten that one, perfect moment where mother and daughter understood each other and all they'd been through. Time hadn't slowed, there were no tears for a sacrifice for a mother to see. There was only Jack, dying in her arms and the vicious, desperate prayer that it would work.

That wouldn't go away.

He pressed without pressing, made her look at him, young and breathing and like a flash of lightning had been elongated by gods into hours.

The light forever, the light by which the color would return.

"Love," he called, and it was a thousand other times, when the epithet had fallen as a shout from his lips or when he whispered it in the dark. It was everything, and she blinked, as if lost. "_Look at me._"

And she did.

"You are not alone," he whispered, and it seemed to fall to her slowly. There was a fog over her eyes.

"There are some things," she paused, blinking away drops of the ocean, caught behind her eyes and begging to trace clear lines down her cheeks. "That you can't heal."

The scars on her skin seemed to speak in arcane, demonic tongues. They whispered from hells made of burning ships and danger he couldn't save her from. But he stepped between her and that blade, he was content to let his heartbeats fade and he wouldn't let her be lost. Not when he'd finally kept his promise, not when all the words he'd let be assumed between them were finally rising to his lips.

"'_Love seeketh not itself to please,/ Nor for itself hath any care,/But for another gives its ease,/And builds a heaven in hell's despair.'__'_" Jack whispered, his fingers catching tears in the swirls of his fingerprints. "Got to try, Annie."

She was too bright, too beautiful with her eyes shining with unshed tears and dappled light. Almost. More like the night sky, the scatter-print of a hundred thousand stars and galaxies and northern lights. She was all of that, and it's reflection on the calm ocean.

She avoided his eyes, like she could read his thoughts and found they settled too heavy on her soul. Like she was waking from a dream and found reality hard to swallow.

He held her until the shaking stopped.

Xx

Time was meaningless, it bled around them; it rose and fell with a tide they imagined to exist in their souls. When he let her up, standing without pain and breathing mist and smoke and the last kisses of magic on the water, the spaces around them seemed huge, like they were opposing magnets to the others, men who slipped back into that other world, beyond the veil. There and back again. Angelica was long gone, and Jack hoped he'd never see her again, never make Anna feel so worthless.

Juan de Pedro tipped his hat, his face a mask of content, like the pieces had fallen into place and he had made peace with his Lord. He was carried beyond the barrier, and Jack realized they were being given this, with their company shrinking so fast back into the Florida heat. This was their gift.

This one moment inside a moment, without an audience.

"Jack."

He looked at her, really looked at her. Could see the way her shoulders tilted back and her hand rested on her sword, the way her red-rimmed eyes seemed to find a home in him. Like he was all that mattered, without having to say it.

He wished they gave voice to their thoughts, wished they gave them wings and let them fly to the horizon and tell the stars their secret dreams and wishes.

"I could not have lived if—even if Bonny was. I couldn't have," she said softly, like the words were hard to find. Like they were hiding in ghost towns and seedy back alleys in London. _Don't leave me_ melted into the shadows behind a bar and _I can't lose you _gathered dust next to the untouched piano and _I love you_ was too drunk to speak itself, and make it real to more than just the bartender.

"I love you," he said, because Jack Sparrow wasn't afraid of anything. Because sometimes he was caught by how much she could consume a moment, how she could dominate his thoughts with just a smile or a tear or shaking fingertips. And she needed to know he could still be caught by her, that he was always caught by her, on the edge of something huge and indefinable.

Anna closed her eyes against this world, her hands fisted in Jack's shirt like he was the only thing keeping her on the ground. "Keep talking. Keep talking." _Be alive. _

And it was like after the Locker closed behind him and he drank in her smile and the sound of her voice and clung to all things life with a vicious need. She needed this, and he could give it to her. Could give her the words he'd kept in the pit of himself for an anchor in this endless storm.

Her.

The dawn and all the new storms she brings with the light of day.

He brushed his fingers over her collar bone, slipping against a thin red cut, a bruise blooming across her shoulder, and her body was a story. Myth and Legend wrapped up inside her skin. She was Perseus and Achilles and King Arthur and Robin Hood and the Pirate Princess.

"Beautiful. Like the ocean on a calm night. I could drown there. I want to.

"I want to teach you all the ways you can take stars from the sky and all the ways you can fall off the edge of the earth. I want to show you how much you've changed me without touching, without leaving any scars. I want to tear you apart at the very fabric and learn you inside and out. I want to prove that I'm alive to myself, and I want you to be there to catch me when I go too fast and the wind makes me numb to the sun in my eyes. I want to make you doubt sadness exists anymore, I want to build you like you were a monument to angels and then I want to keep your for myself. I want to journey, I want to love you like it's the greatest adventure I've ever taken. I want to be breathless at midnight and drown inside the way you say my name. I want to feel human in ways I never have before, I want to make gods jealous of what I have. I want to heal all your wounds and wear your scars like tattoos. I want you to live a hundred thousand years on magic that burns with divinity you're worth and I want to live one less, so I don't have to live without you."

Anna felt alive.

But.

More than that, and there _was_ more than that, she felt worth something. She felt cherished, warm and belonging. She'd been wandering without ever leaving home, without ever being lost.

His skin was warm, and his voice broke with his last words, and his tears were hot.

Was this the first time she'd seen him cry?

She felt unfolded, small and aware of him in ways she hadn't been before. He moved through realities and time and space and made it to the middle of her, the middle of everything. The Fountain dripped poetry behind them, and Anna breathed him in.

Jack held onto her like she was the one who nearly died.

Like she was the one almost lost.

"A thousand years is an awfully long time," she whispered against his neck.

He could feel her smiling against his skin, and thought it would be okay. They were not so lost inside this fear, this sadness, this grief. They were fractures of people, but they fit together, in all the broken places. They could do this.

"One thing you're not is boring, love," he said, brushing his hands down the curve of her spine. He could fall into her, if he wasn't careful.

He was never a careful man.

Xx

You could breathe in the sunshine.

So they did.

They ran along the beach like children, stumbling over themselves in sea surf and kicking up the salty spray to watch it scatter like diamonds in the light. They shoved off their fears and Anna kept her mother's name bundled up tightly against her chest, and whispered it to herself when they slowed to a walk. And run again.

Groves wandered behind with his uniform in tatters, his coat lost to the waves long ago, a smile splitting his face into something like breathable life. Freedom. He could taste it, could feel it surging through his veins.

It was like waking up.

He watched Anna and Jack trip over themselves, dance like morons singing at the top of their lungs _drink up be hearties yo ho!_ and whispered along under his breath with Gibbs as they left their tracks in the sand. He shouldered the glass ship armada to ease the older man's joints, and wondered if this bright feeling in his veins would ever dissipate. If there was ever a time he would feel more or less alive. If the best pirates he'd ever known would be alright, if they were losing themselves in the moment because they hadn't thought they'd get another chance. If he should join their dancing, if he should chase the horizon, if he should fly.

His life was new, and he was ready to greet it.

Xx

Anna could feel a rush in her veins, a burning feral spark. Lightning had become her. The grief would take her later, would rise up in her like some horrible tide, and she would let it.

But for now.

Now there was only the pull, the horizon begging for her to meet it, the next adventure, the promise of more. Of steel and bullets and danger and Jack would make it, Jack would be okay.

"More than one way to live forever," he said, his eyes a knowing kind of warm. Like he was reading her from the inside out, like she belonged inside his head and his heart. "You can be sure Captain Jack Sparrow won't have his name on all of 'em."

"Let it never be said my birdie never found something," she agreed, watching the boundless blue sky stretch endlessly in line with the ocean.

"The world belongs to us, love."

There had never been more truth in that. Not when she felt she was being put back together, not when she was broken and desperate and so _relieved. _They'd made it one more day, and the world was theirs. The ocean belonged to them. There was nothing they couldn't face.

She breathed, and salty air rushed familiar and cool into her lungs. The horizon seemed to hold secrets, and she still wanted to know. She still wanted to pick apart the fabric of the world and lose herself in it. She wanted it for what it was, bloody and vicious and breathtaking.

"_There she is lad!"_ Gibbs shouted for their new company, Groves, who watched the horizon like it was his only love, who stared in awe as the _Black Pearl _rounded the corner like it had so many years ago.

Like it had on the battlements at Port Royal, when a pirate had kissed her and jumped from the top, when she'd refused to let him die, when she realized she couldn't leave him behind in memory.

"Nothing much has changed since the last time she rounded the corner when we needed her," she said softly, her smile that secret thing Jack always kept in his breast pocket, up against his beating heart. He let the silence ask his question for him. "You will go, and the adventure is promised, the danger, the fear, the burning need to reach the very edge of the horizon and all the terrifying things it holds.

"And the only thing I want, even after all this time, is to follow."

Jack spun her in knee deep water, a hundred thousand droplets scattering in the breeze, and kissed her. Let himself go into her, with the sunshine and the _Pearl _as their background. Because she was everything, then. There was nothing but her and the feeling of the ocean around them, the call in their blood.

He'd never loved her more than now, bloody and tired and dirty and so breathtakingly real. She followed. She _followed him._

Jack kissed her because it was the same as breathing; because she followed him and he looked behind to be sure she was there. Because his life wouldn't have the same rush, the same burst and flash of lightning and fire, without her in it. And she should be told that more often.

And maybe this was kind of like coming home, maybe this was what being welcomed into a new world felt like. Maybe this was wind picking him up and sending him flying to the edges of reality. Maybe this was the ocean crawling up inside of him, and finding a way to breathe around it. Maybe this was a kiss against a sunset that never lost its passion.

Home.

In a kiss, in her arms, in the water they could just slip beneath, in the ship with midnight sails coming to take them to another heart-pounding adventure. Endless and new, they had years to figure themselves out, to learn each other, to make their time endless in the real sense, and he promised himself he would.

She broke away first, as if she'd read his thoughts.

Jack Sparrow didn't think she'd ever looked more beautiful, her eyes dazed from the taste of him and bright with the promise of tomorrow's sunrise. And _drink up me hearties yo ho _pressed against his lungs and he breathed his freedom, he breathed all the things beyond it.

"What if we should grow tired of this world?"

He grinned, a secret, dangerous thing riddled with promise and mischief and bar fights and swords and love and lust and kisses at midnight and she loved him more than air, more than anything. She would follow him anywhere, would learn to fly if it meant they could face the next war side by side. He shrugged, facing the horizon and the _Pearl_, and answered like it was as simple as breathing.

And it was, because they were pirates, and they were free, they were more than that. So much more than that.

"Then we'll find another one."

**This is Han, signing off.**


End file.
